

PRJINCE ZALESKI 
BY M.P.SHIEL 



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PRINCE 


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Come noWf and let us reason toghl^fp^ ^ 


Of the strange things that befell the *7 ”7 yH 
valiant Knight in the Sable Mountain ; 
and how he imitated the fenance of 
Beltenebros, 


CERVANTES 


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BOSTON: ROBERTS BROS.. 1895 
LONDON: JOHN LANE, VIGO ST 


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Copyright, 1895, 

By Roberts Brothers. 


All rights reserved. 


^nibcrsitg Press: 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 


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CONTENTS 

^ Page 

The Race of Orven ii 

The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks .... 83 

The S. S 133 




I 




THE RACE OF OR VEN. 

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PRINCE ZALESKI. 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 

EVER without grief and pain could I 



^ remember the fate of Prince Zaleski, 
victim of a too importunate, too unfortu- 
nate Love, which the fulgor of the throne 
itself could not abash ; exile perforce from 
his native land, and voluntary exile from 
the rest of men ! Having renounced the 
world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as 
a falling star, he had passed, the world 
quickly ceased to wonder at him ; and even 
I, to whom, more than to another, the work- 
ings of that just and passionate mind had 
been revealed, half forgot him in the rush 
of things. 

But during the time that what was 
called the Pharanx labyrinth ’’ was exer- 


12 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


cising many of the heaviest brains in the 
land, my thought turned repeatedly to him ; 
and even when the affair had passed from 
the general attention, a bright day in 
spring, combined perhaps with a latent mis- 
trust of the denouement of that dark plot, 
drew me to his place of hermitage. 

I reached the gloomy abode of my friend 
as the sun set. It was a vast palace of the 
older world standing lonely in the midst of 
woodland, and approached by a sombre 
avenue of poplars and cypresses, through 
which the sunlight hardly pierced. Up 
this I passed, and, seeking out the deserted 
stables (which I found all too dilapidated 
to afford shelter), finally put up my caleche 
in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican 
chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse 
for the night on a paddock behind the 
domain. 

As I pushed back the open front-door 
and entered the mansion, I could not but 
wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led 
this wayward man to select a brooding- 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


13 


place so desolate for the passage of his 
days. I regarded it as a vast tomb of 
Mausoliis, in which lay deep sepulchred how 
much genius, culture, brilliancy, power ! 
The hall was constructed in the manner of 
a Roman atrium^ and, from the oblong pool 
of turgid water in the centre, a troop of fat 
and otiose rats fled, weakly squealing, at 
my approach. I mounted by broken mar- 
ble steps to the corridors running round 
the open space, and thence pursued my 
way through a mazeland of apartments — 
suite upon suite — along many a length of 
passage up and down many stairs. Dust- 
clouds rose from the uncarpeted floors and 
choked me ; incontinent Echo coughed an- 
swering ricochets to my footsteps in the 
gathering darkness, and added emphasis to 
the funereal gloom of the dwelling. No- 
where was there a vestige of furniture — 
nowhere a trace of human life. 

After a long interval I came, in a remote 
tower of the building and near its utmost 
summit, to a richly carpeted passage, from 


14 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


the ceiling of which three Mosaic lamps 
shed dim violet, scarlet, and pale-rose lights 
around. At the end I perceived two figures 
standing as if in silent guard on each side 
of a door tapestried with the python’s skin. 
One was a jjost-replica in Parian marble of 
the nude Aphrodite of Cnidus ; in the other 
I recognized the gigantic form of the negro 
Ham, — the prince’s only attendant, whose 
fierce and glistening and ebon visage broad- 
ened into a grin of intelligence as I came 
nearer. Nodding to him, I pushed without 
ceremony into Zaleski’s apartment. 

The room was not a large one, but lofty. 
Even in the semi-darkness of the very 
faint, greenish lustre radiated from an open 
censer-like lampas of fretted gold in the 
centre of the domed encausted roof, a cer- 
tain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness 
in the furnishing filled me with amazement. 
The air was heavy with the scented odor 
of this light, and the fumes of the narcotic 
canndbis-sativa, the base of the hhang of 
the Mohammedans, in which I knew it to 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


15 


be the habit of my friend to assuage him- 
self. The hangings were of wine-colored 
velvet, heavy, gold-fringed, and embroidered 
at Nurshedabad. All the world knew 
Prince Zaleski to be a consummate cognos- 
cente, a profound amateur, as well as a 
savant and a thinker; but I was, never- 
theless, astounded at the mere multitudi- 
nousness of the curios he had contrived to 
crowd into the space around him. Side 
by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a 
Chinese ^^wise man,” a gnostic gem, an 
amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work. The 
general effect was a hizarrerie of half- 
weird sheen and gloom. Flemish sepul- 
chral brasses companied strangely with 
runic tablets, miniature paintings, a winged 
bull, Tamil scriptures on lacquered leaves 
of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries richly 
gemmed. Brahmin gods. One whole side 
of the I'oom was occupied by an organ, 
whose thunder in that circumscribed place 
must have set all these relics of dead 
epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic 


16 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


dances. As I entered, the vaporous atmos- 
phere was palpitating to the low, liquid 
tinkling of an invisible musical box. The 
prince reclined on a couch from which a 
draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over 
the floor. Beside him, stretched in its open 
sarcophagus which rested on three brazen 
trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient 
Memphian, from the upper part of which 
the brown cerements had rotted or been 
rent, leaving the hideousness of the naked, 
grinning countenance exposed to view. 

Discarding his gemmed chibouque and 
an old vellum reprint of Anacreon, Zaleski 
rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, 
muttering at the same time some common- 
place about his pleasure ” and the ^‘un- 
expectedness’' of my visit. He then gave 
orders to Ham to prepare me a bed in one 
of the adjoining chambers. We passed 
the greater part of the night in a delight- 
ful stream of that somnolent and half- 
mystic talk which Prince Zaleski alone 
could initiate and sustain, during which 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


17 


he repeatedly pressed on me a concoction 
of Indian hemp resembling hashish, pre- 
pared by his own hands, and quite innocu- 
uous. It was after a simple breakfast the 
next morning that I entered on the sub- 
ject which was partly the occasion of my 
visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed 
in a Turkish heneesli, and listened to me, a 
little wearily perhaps at first, with woven 
fingers and the pale inverted eyes of old 
anchorites and astrologers, the moony, 
greenish light falling on his always wan 
features. 

You knew Lord Pharanx?’’ I asked. 

I have met him in ^ the world.' His 
son. Lord Randolph, too, I saw once at Court 
at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter 
Palace of the Tsar. I noticed — in their 
great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of 
a very peculiar conformation, and a cer- 
tain aggressiveness of demeanor — a strong 
likeness between father and son.” 

I had brought with me a bundle of old 

newspapers, and, comparing these as I 
2 


18 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents 
before him. 

The father,’’ I said, held, as you 
know, high office in a late Administration, 
and was one of our big luminaries in poli- 
tics ; he has also been President of the 
Council of several learned societies, and 
author of a book on Modern Ethics. His 
son was rapidly rising to eminence in the 
corjps diplomatique, and lately (though, 
strictly speaking, unebenhurtig) contracted 
an affiance with the Prinzessin Charlotte 
Mariana Natalia of Morgen-iippigen, a lady 
with a strain of indubitable Hohenzollern 
blood in her royal veins. The Orven 
family is a very old and distinguished 
one, though, especially in modern days, 
far from wealthy. However, some little 
time after Kandolph had become engaged 
to this royal lady, the father insured 
his life for immense sums in various 
offices both in England and America, and 
the reproach of poverty is now swept from 
the race. Six months ago, almost simul- 
taneously, both father and son resigned 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


19 


their various positions, en hloc. But all 
this, of course, I am telling you on the 
assumption that you have not already read 
it in the papers/’ 

A modern newspaper,” he said, being 
what it mostly is, is the one thing insup- 
portable to me at present. Believe me, I 
never see one.” 

Well, then. Lord Pharanx, as I said, 
threw up his posts in the fulness of his 
vigor, and retired to one of his country 
seats. A good many years ago he and 
Randolph had a terrible row over some 
trifle, and, with the implacability that 
distinguishes their race, had not since 
exchanged a word. But some little time 
after the retirement of the father, a mes- 
sage was despatched by him to the son, 
who was then in India. Considered as 
the first step in the rapprochement of this 
proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an 
altogether remarkable message, and was 
subsequently deposed to in evidence by a 
telegraph official; it ran, — 


20 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


‘ Return, The beginning of the end is come ! ’ 
Whereupon Randolph did return, and, in 
three months from the date of his landing 
in England, Lord Pharanx was dead.” 

Murdered? ” 

A certain something in the tone in 
which this word was uttered by Zaleski 
puzzled me. It left me uncertain whether 
he had addressed to me an exclamation of 
conviction, or a simple question. I must 
have looked this feeling, for he said at 
once : — 

‘‘ I could easily, from your manner, 
surmise as much, you know. Perhaps I 
might even have foretold it, years ago.” 

‘^Foretold — what? not the murder of 
Lord Pharanx?” 

Something of that kind,” he answered 
with a smile; “but proceed — tell me all 
the facts you know.” 

Word-mysteries of this sort fell fre- 
quent from the lips of the prince. I 
continued the narrative. 

“ The two, then, met and were recon- 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


21 


ciled. But it was a reconciliation without 
cordiality, without affection, a shaking of 
hands across a barrier of brass ; and even this 
hand-shaking was a strictly metaphorical 
one, for they do not seem ever to have got 
beyond the interchange of a frigid bow. 
The opportunities, however, for observation 
were few. Soon after Eandolph’s arrival 
at Orven Hall his father entered on a 
life of the most absolute seclusion. The 
mansion is an old three-storied one, the 
top floor consisting for the most part of 
sleeping-rooms, the first of a library, draw- 
ing-room, and so on, and the ground-floor, 
in addition to the dining and other ordi- 
nary rooms, of another small library, look- 
ing out (at the side of the house) on a low 
balcony, which in turn, looks on a lawn 
dotted with flower-beds. It was this 
smaller library on the ground-floor that 
was now divested of its books and con- 
verted into a bedroom for the earl. Hither 
he migrated, and here he lived, scarcely 
ever leaving it. Randolph, on his part. 


22 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


moved to a room on the first floor 
immediately above this. Some of the 
retainers of the family were dismissed, and, 
on the remaining few fell a hush of ex- 
pectancy, a sense of wonder, as to what 
these things boded. A great enforced quiet 
pervaded the building, the least undue 
noise in any part being sure to be followed 
by the angry voice of the master demand- 
ing the cause. Once, as the servants were 
supping in the kitchen on the side of the 
house most remote from that which he 
occupied, Lord Pharanx, slippered and in 
dressing-gown, appeared at the doorway, 
purple with rage, threatening to pack the 
whole company of them out of doors if 
they did not moderate the clatter of their 
knives and forks. He had always been 
regarded with fear in his own household, 
and the very sound of his voice now 
became a terror. His food was taken to 
him in the room he had made his habitation, 
and it was remarked that, though simple 
before in his gustatory tastes, he now, 


THE RACE OF ORVEN, 


23 


possibly owing to the sedentary life he led, 
became fastidious, insisting on recherche 
bits. I mention all these details to you 
— as I shall mention others — not because 
they have the least connection with the 
tragedy as it subsequently occurred, but 
merely because I know them, and you 
have requested me to state all I know.” 

Yes,” he answered, with a suspicion of 
ermui^ you are right. I may as well hear 
the whole — if I must hear a part.” 

Meanwhile Kandolph appears to have 
visited the earl once a day. In such 
retirement did he, too, live that many of 
his friends still supposed him to be in 
India. There was only one respect in 
which he broke through this privacy. 
You know, of course, that the Orvens 
are, and, I believe always have been, 
noted as the most obstinate, the most 
crabbed of Conservatives in politics. Even 
among the past-enamoured families of 
England, they stand out conspicuously in 
this respect. Is it credible to you, then, 


24 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


that Eandolph should offer himself to 
the Eadical Association of the Borough 
of Orven as a candidate for the next 
election, in opposition to the sitting mem- 
ber? It is on record, too, that he spoke 
at three public meetings — reported in 
local papers — at which he avowed his 
political conversion ; afterwards laid the 
foundation-stone of a new Baptist chapel ; 
presided at a Methodist tea-meeting, and, 
taking an abnormal interest in the debased 
condition of the laborers in the villages 
round, fitted up as a class-room an apart- 
ment on the top floor at Orven Hall, and 
gathered round him on two evenings in 
every week a class of yokels, whom he 
proceeded to cram with demonstrations in 
elementary mechanics/’ 

Mechanics ! ” cried Zaleski, starting up- 
right for a moment, mechanics to agri- 
cultural laborers ! Why not elementary 
chemistry ? Why not elementary botany ? 
Why mechanics ? ” 

This was the first evidence of interest 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 25 

he had shown in the story. I was pleased, 
but answered : — 

The point is unimportant, and there 
really is no accounting for the vagaries of 
such a man. He wished, I imagine, to 
give some idea to the young illiterates of 
the simple laws of motion and force. But 
now I come to a new character in the 
drama, — the chief character of all. One 
day a woman presented herself at Orven 
Hall and demanded to see its owner. She 
spoke English wdth a strong French accent. 
Though approaching middle life, she was 
still beautiful, having wild black eyes and 
creamy pale face. Her dress w^as tawdry, 
cheap, and loud, showing signs of wear; 
her hair was imkempt ; her manners were 
not the manners of a lady. A certain ve- 
hemence, exasperation, unrepose, distin- 
guished all she said and did. The footman 
refused her admission ; Lord Pharanx, he 
said, was invisible. She persisted violently, 
pushed past him, and had to be forcibly 
ejected, during all which the voice of the 


26 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


master was heard roaring from the passage 
red-eyed remonstrance at the unusual noise. 
She went away gesticulating wildly, and 
vowing^ vengeance on Lord Pharanx and 
all the world. It was afterwards found 
that she had taken up her abode in one 
of the neighboring hamlets called Lee. 

This person, who gave the name of 
Maude Cibras, subsequently called at the 
Hall three times in succession, and was 
each time refused admittance. It was now, 
however, thought advisable to inform Ran- 
dolph of her visits. He said she might be 
permitted to see him if she returned. This 
she did on the next day, and had a long 
interview in private with him. Her voice 
was heard raised, as if in angry protest, by 
one Hester Dyett, a servant of the house, 
while Randolph, in low tones, seemed to 
try to soothe her. The conversation was 
in French, and no word could be made out. 
She passed out at length, tossing her head 
jauntily, and smiling a vulgar triumph at 
the footman who had before opposed her 


THE RACE OF ORYEN. 27 

ingress. She was never known to seek 
admission to the house again. 

But her connection with its inmates 
did not cease. The same Hester asserts 
that one night, coming home late through 
the park, she saw two persons convers- 
ing on a bench beneath the trees, crept 
behind some bushes, and discovered that 
they were the strange woman and Ran- 
dolph. The same servant bears evidence 
to tracking them to other meeting-places, 
and to finding in the letter-bag letters ad- 
dressed to Maude Cibras in Randolph’s 
hand-writing. One of these was actually 
unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing 
did the intercourse become that it seems 
even to have interfered with the outburst 
of radical zeal in the new political convert. 
The rendezvous — always held under cover 
of darkness, but naked and open to the eye 
of the watchful Hester — sometimes clashed 
with the science lectures, when these lat- 
ter would be put off, so that they became 
gradually fewer, and then almost ceased.” 


28 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


^^Your narrative becomes unexpectedly 
interesting,” said Zaleski. But this un- 
earthed letter of Randolph’s, — what was 
in it?” 

I read as follows : — 

“Dear Mademoiselle Cibras, — I am exert- 
ing my utmost influence for you with my father. 
But he shows no signs of coming round as yet. 
If I could only induce him to see you ! But he 
is, as you know, a person of unrelenting will, 
and meanwhile you must confide in my loyal 
efforts on your behalf. At the same time I 
admit that the situation is a precarious one. 
You are, I am sure, well provided for in the 
present will of Lord Pharanx, but he is on the 
point, within, say, three or four days, of making 
another, and, exasperated as he is at your ap- 
pearance in England, I know there is no chance 
of your receiving a centime under the new will. 
Before then, however, we must hope that some- 
thing favorable to you may happen ; and in the 
mean time, let me implore you not to let your 
only too just resentment pass beyond the bounds 
of reason. 

“ Sincerely yours, 

“ Randolph. ” 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


29 


I like the letter ! ’’ cried Zaleski. “ You 
notice the tone of manly candor. But the 
facts I — were they true ? Bid the earl 
make a new will in the time specified ? ” 
No, but that may have been because 
his death intervened.’’ 

And in the old will, was Mademoiselle 
Cibras provided for?” 

Yes, that at least was correct.” 

A shadow of pain passed over his face. 
And now,” I went on, I come to the 
closing scene, in which one of England’s 
foremost men perished by the act of an 
obscure assassin. The letter I have read 
was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of 
January. The next thing that happens is 
on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his 
room for another during the whole day, and 
a skilled mechanic was introduced into it 
for the purpose of effecting some alterations. 
Asked by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving 
the house, what was the nature of his ope- 
rations, the man replied that he had been 
applying a patent arrangement to the win- 


30 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


dow looking out on the balcony, for the 
better protection of the room against bur- 
glars, several robberies having recently 
been committed in the neighborhood. The 
sudden death of this man, however, before 
the occurrence of the tragedy, prevented 
his evidence being heard. On the next 
day, the 7th, Hester, entering the room 
with Lord Pharanx’ dinner, fancies, though 
she cannot tell why (inasmuch as his back 
is towards her, he sitting in an arm-chair 
by the fire) that Lord Pharanx has been 
‘ drinking heavily.’ 

On the 8th, a singular thing befell. 
The earl was at last induced to see Maude 
Cibras, and during the morning of that day, 
with his own hand, wrote a note informing 
her of his decision, Randolph handing the 
note to a messenger. That note also has 
been made public. It reads as follows : — 

“Maude Cibras: — You may come here to- 
night after dark. Walk to the south side of the 
house, come up the steps to the balcony, and 
pass in through the open window to my room. 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


31 


Remember, however, that you have nothing to 
expect from me, and that from to-night I blot 
you eternally from my mind ; but I will hear 
your story, which I know beforehand to be false. 
Destroy this note. Pharanx.” 

As I progressed with my tale, I came to 
notice that over the countenance of Prince 
Zaleski there grew little by little a singular 
fixed aspect. His small, keen features dis- 
torted themselves into an expression of 
what I can only describe as an abnormal 
inquisitiveness^ an inquisitiveness most im- 
patient, arrogant in its intensity. His 
pupils, contracted each to a dot, became 
the central puncta of two rings of fiery 
light ; his little sharp teeth seemed to 
gnash. Once before I had seen him look 
thus greedily, when, grasping a Troglodyte 
tablet covered with half-effaced hiero- 
glyphics, his fingers livid with the fixity of 
his grip, he bent on it- that strenuous 
inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, 
till, by a species of mesmeric dominancy, 
he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum 


32 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


it liid from other eyes ; then he lay back, 
pale and faint, from the too arduous victory. 

When I had read Lord Pharanx’ letter, 
he took the paper eagerly from my hand 
and ran his eyes over the passage. 

Tell me the end,” he said. 

Maude Cibras,” I went on, thus invited 
to a meeting with the earl, failed to make 
her appearance at the appointed time. It 
happened that she had left her lodgings in 
the village early that very morning, and, 
for some purpose or other, had travelled to 
the town of Bath. Kandolph, too, went 
away the same day in the opposite direc- 
tion, to Plymouth. He returned on the fol- 
lowing morning, the 9th, soon after walked 
over to Lee, and entered into conversation 
with the keeper of the inn where Cibras 
lodged ; asked if she was at home, and on 
being told that she had gone away, asked 
further if she had taken her luggage with 
her ; was informed that she had and had 
also announced her intention of at once 
leaving England. He then walked away 


THE RACE OF ORYEN. 


33 


in tlie direction of the Hall. On this day 
Hester Dyett noticed that there were many 
articles of value scattered about the earl’s 
room, notably a tiara of old Brazilian bril- 
liants, sometimes worn by the late Lady 
Pharanx. Randolph, who was present at 
the time, further drew her attention to 
these by telling her that Lord Pharanx had 
chosen to bring together in his apartment 
many of the family jewels, and she was 
instructed to tell the other servants of this 
fact in case they should notice any sus- 
picious-looking loafers about the estate. 

" On the 10th, both father and son re- 
mained in their rooms all day except 
when the latter came down to meals ; at 
which times he would lock his door behind 
him, and with his own hands take in the 
earl’s food, giving as his reason that his 
father was writing a very important docu- 
ment, and did not wish to be disturbed by 
the presence of a servant. During the 
forenoon, Hester Dyett, hearing loud 
noises in Randolph’s room, as if furniture 


34 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


was being removed from place to place, 
found some pretext for knocking at his 
door, when he ordered her on no account 
to interrupt him again, as he was busy 
packing his clothes in view of a journey to 
London on the next day. The subsequent 
conduct of the woman shows that her 
curiosity must have been excited to the 
utmost by the undoubtedly strange spec- 
tacle of Kandolph packing his own clothes. 
During the afternoon a lad from the village 
was instructed to collect his companions 
for a science lecture the same evening 
at eight o’clock. And so the eventful day 
wore on. 

We arrive now at this hour of eight P. M. 
on this tenth day of January. The night 
is dark and windy, some snow has been 
falling, but has now ceased. In an upper 
room is Randolph engaged in expounding 
the elements of dynamics ; in the room 
under that is Hester Dyett, for Hester has 
somehow obtained a key that opens the 
door of Randolph’s room, and takes advan- 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


35 


tage of his absence upstairs to explore it. 
Under her is Lord Pharanx, certainly in 
bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling 
all over in a fever of fear and excitement, 
holds a lighted taper in one hand which 
she religiously shades with the other; for 
the storm is gusty, and the gusts tearing 
through the crevices of the rattling old 
casements toss great flickering shadows on 
the hangings, which frighten her to death. 
She has just time to see that the whole 
room is in the wildest confusion, when 
suddenly a rougher puff blows out the 
flame, and she is left in what to her, 
standing as she was, on that forbidden 
ground, must have been a horror of dark- 
ness. At the same moment, clear and 
sharp from right beneath her, a pistol shot 
rings out on her ear. For an instant she 
stands in stone, incapable of motion. Then 
on her dazed senses there supervenes, so 
she swore, the consciousness that some ob- 
ject is moving in the room, moving appar- 
ently of its own accord, moving in direct 


36 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


opposition to all the laws of nature as she 
knows them. She imagines that she per- 
ceives a phantasm — a strange something, 
globular, white, looking, as she says, like 
a good-sized ball of cotton — rise directly 
from the floor before her, ascending slowly 
upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible 
force. A sharp shock of the sense of the 
supernatural deprives her of ordered reason. 
Throwing forward her arms, and uttering 
a shrill scream, she rushes towards the 
door. But she never reaches it. Midway 
she falls prostrate over some object, and 
knows no more; and when an hour later 
she is borne out of the room in the arms 
of Kandolph himself, the blood is dripping 
from a fracture of her right tibia. 

Meantime in the upper chamber the 
pistol shot and the scream of the woman 
have been heard. All eyes turn to Ran- 
dolph. He stands in the shadow of the 
mechanical contrivance on which he has 
been illustrating his points, leans for sup- 
port on it ; he essays to speak ; the mus- 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


37 


cles of his face work, but no sound comes. 
Only after a time is he able to gasp, ^ Did 
you hear something — from below ? ’ They 
answer ^ Yes ’ in chorus ; then one of the 
lads takes a lighted candle, and together 
they troop out, Randolph behind them. A 
terrified servant rushes up with the news 
that something dreadful has happened in 
the house. They proceed for some dis- 
tance, but there is an open window on the 
stairs, and the light is blown out. They 
have to wait some minutes till another is 
obtained, and then the procession moves for- 
ward once more. Arrived at Lord Pharanx' 
door, and finding it locked, a lantern is 
procured, and Randolph leads them through 
the house and out on the lawn. But hav- 
ing nearly reached the balcony, a lad ob- 
serves a track of small woman’s feet in 
the snow ; a halt is called, and then Ran- 
dolph points out another track of feet half 
obliterated by the snow, extending from a 
coppice close by up to the balcony, and 
forming an angle with the first track. 


38 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


These latter are great big feet, made by 
ponderous laborer's boots. He holds the 
lantern over the flower-beds, and shows 
how they have been trampled down. Some 
one finds a common scarf, such as workmen 
wear ; and a ring and a locket, dropped by 
the burglars in their flight, is also found by 
Eandolph half-buried in the snow. • And 
now the foremost reach the window. Kan- 
dolph, from behind, calls to them to enter. 
They cry back that they cannot, the win- 
dow being closed. At this reply he seems 
to be overcome by surprise, by terror. 
Some one hears him murmur the words, 
‘ My God, what can have happened now ? ' 
His horror is increased when one of the lads 
bears to him a revolting trophy which has 
been found just outside the window, — it 
is the front phalanges of three fingers of a 
human hand. Again he utters the agonized 
moan, ‘ My God ! ' and then, mastering his 
agitation, makes for the window ; he finds 
that the catch of the sash has been roughly 
wrenched off, and that the sash can be 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


39 


opened by merely pnshing it up ; does so 
and enters. The room is in darkness ; on 
the floor under the window is found the 
insensible body of the woman Cibras. She 
is alive, but has fliinted. Her right fingers 
are closed round the handle of a large bowie 
knife, which is covered with blood, parts of 
the left are missing. All the jewelry has 
been stolen from the room. Lord Pharanx 
lies* on the bed stabbed through the bed 
clothes to the heart. Later on a bullet is 
also found imbedded in his brain. I should 
explain that a trenchant edge, running 
along the bottom of the sash, was the ob- 
vious means by which the fingers of Cibras 
had been cut off. This had been placed 
there a few days before by the workman I 
spoke of. Several secret springs had been 
placed on the inner side of the lower hori- 
zontal piece of the window-frame, by press- 
ing any one of which the sash was lowered ; 
so that no one ignorant of the secret, could 
pass out from within without resting the 
hand on one of these springs, and so bring- 


40 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


ing down the armed sash suddenly on the 
underlying hand. 

There was, of course, a trial. The 
poor culprit, in mortal terror of death, 
shrieked out a confession of the murder 
just as the jury had returned from their 
brief consultation, and before they had 
time to pronounce their verdict of ‘ guilty.’ 
But she denied shooting Lord Pharanx, and 
she denied stealing the jewels, and indeed 
no pistol and no jewels were found on her, 
or anywhere in the room. So that many 
points remain mysterious. What part did 
the burglars play in the tragedy? Were 
they in collusion with Cibras ? Had the 
strange behavior of at least one of the in- 
mates of Orven Hall no hidden signifi- 
cance ? The wildest guesses were made 
throughout the country; theories pro- 
pounded. But no theor}^ explained all the 
points. The ferment, however, has now 
subsided. To-morrow morning Maude 
Cibras ends her life on the gallows.” 

Thus I ended my narrative. 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


41 


Without a word Zaleski rose from the 
couch and walked to the organ. Assisted 
from behind by Ham, who foreknew his 
master’s every whim, he proceeded to 
render with infinite feeling an air from the 
Lakme of Delibes ; long he sat dreamily 
uttering the melody, his head sunken on 
his breast. When at last he rose, his great 
expanse of brow was clear, and a smile, 
all but solemn in its serenity, was on his 
lips. He walked up to an ivory escritoire^ 
scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper, 
and handed it to the negro with the order 
to take my trap and drive with the mes- 
sage in all haste to the nearest telegraph 
office. 

That message,” he said, resuming his 
place on the couch, is a last word on the 
tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some 
modification in the final stage of its history. 
And now, Shiel, let us sit together and con- 
fer on this matter; from the manner in 
which you have expressed yourself, it is 
evident that there are points which puzzle 


42 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


you; you do not get a clean coup d'oeil of 
the whole regiment of facts, and their causes 
and their consequences as they occurred. 
Let us see if out of that confusion we can- 
not produce a coherence, a symmetry. A 
great wrong is done, and on the society in 
which it is done is imposed the task of 
making it translucent, of seeing it in all its 
relations, and of punishing it. But what 
happens ? The society fails to rise to the 
occasion ; on the whole, it contrives to 
make the opacity more opaque ; does not 
see the crime in any human sense; is 
unable to punish it. Now this, you will 
admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful fail- 
ure, — woful, I mean, not very in itself, 
but very in its significance ; and there 
must be a precise cause for it. That cause 
is the lack of something not merely or 
specially in the investigators of the wrong, 
but in the world at large, — shall we not 
boldly call it the lack of culture ? Do not, 
however, misunderstand me ; by the term I 
mean not so much attainment in general as 


THE RACE OF ORYEN. 


43 


mood in particular. Whether or when such 
mood may become universal, may be to 
you a matter of doubt. As for me, I often 
think that when the era of civilization be- 
gins, as assuredly it shall some day begin, 
when the races of the world cease to be 
credulous, ovine mobs, and become critical 
human nations, then will be the ushering 
in of the ten thousand years of a clairvoyant 
culture. But nowhere and at no time dur- 
ing the very few hundreds of years that 
man has occupied the earth has there been 
one single sign of its presence. In indi- 
viduals, yes, in the Greek Plato, and I 
think in your English Milton, and Bishop 
Berkeley, — but in humanity never; and 
hardly in any individual outside those two 
nations. The reason, I fancy, is not so 
much that man is a hopeless fool, as that 
Time, so far as he is concerned, has, as 
we know, only just begun, — it being, of 
course, conceivable that the creation of a 
perfect society of men, as the first requi- 
site to a regime of culture, must nick to it- 


44 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


self a longer loop of time than the making 
of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious 
person, — he is one of your cherished 
^ novel * writers, by the way, if that be in- 
deed a novel in which there is nowhere any 
pretence at novelty, — once assured me 
that he could never reflect without swelling 
on the greatness of the age in which he 
lived, an age the mighty civilization of 
which he likened to the Augustan and 
Periclean. A certain stony gaze of an- 
thropological interest with which I regarded 
his frontal bone seemed to strike the poor 
man dumb, and he took a hurried depart- 
ure. Could he have been ignorant that 
ours is, in general, greater than the Peri- 
clean for the very reason that the Divinity is 
neither the devil nor a bunsrler : that three 

O ' 

thousand years of human consciousness is 
not nothing; that a whole is greater than its 
part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis ? But 
it was the assumption that it was therefore 
in any way great in the abstract that occa- 
sioned my profound astonishment, and in- 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


45 


deed contempt. Civilization, if it means 
anything, can only mean the art by which 
men live musically together, — to the lut- 
ings, as it were, of Pan-pipes, or, say per- 
haps, to triumphant organ-bursts of martial, 
marching dithyrambs. Any formula, defin- 
ing it as ‘ the art of lying back and getting 
elaborately tickled,’ should surely at this 
hour be too primitive, too Opic, to bring 
anything but a smile to the lips of grown, 
‘white-skinned men ; and the very fact that 
such a definition can still find undoubting 
acceptance in all quarters may be an indi- 
cation that the true tSea which this condi- 
tion of being must finally assume is far 
indeed — far perhaps by ages and aeons — 
from becoming part of the general concep- 
tion. Nowhere since the beginning has the 
gross problem of living ever so much as 
approached solution, much less the delicate 
and intricate one of living together ; a propos 
of which your body corporate not only still 
produces criminals (as the body-natural, 
fleas), but its very elementary organism can- 


46 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


not SO much as catch a really athletic one 
as yet. Meanwhile you and I are handi- 
capped. The individual travaileth in pain. 
In the struggle for quality, powers, air, he 
spends his strength and yet hardly escapes 
asphyxiation. He can no more wriggle him- 
self free of the psychic gravitations that in- 
vest him than the earth can shake herself 
loose of the sun, or he of the omnipotences 
that rivet him to the universe. If by chance 
one shoots a downy hint of wings, an in- 
. stant feeling of contrast puffs him with self- 
consciousness, — a tragedy at once, the 
unconscious being ‘ the alone complete.’ 
To attain to anything, he must needs screw 
the head up into the atmosphere of the 
future, while feet and hands drip dark 
ichors of despair from the crucifying cross 
of the crude present — 'a horrid strain ! 
Far up, a nightly instigation of stars he 
sees; but he may not strike them with the 
head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I 
know w^ell toward what wild azimuths I 
would compel her helm ; but gravity, grav- 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


47 


ity — chiefest curse of Eden’s sin — is hos- 
tile. When, indeed (as is ordained), the old 
mother swings herself into a sublirner orbit, 
we on her back will follow ; till then we 
make to ourselves Icarian “ organa ” in 
vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of 
station which is at fiult ; move that upward, 
you move all. But meantime, is it not 
Goethe who assures us that ‘further reach- 
eth no man, make he what stretching he 
will ’ ? For man, you perceive, is not many 
but one. It is absurd to suppose that Eng- 
land can be free while Poland is enslaved ; 
Paris is/ar from the beginnings of civiliza- 
tion whilst Toobooloo and' Chicago are bar- 
baric. Probably no ill-fated microcephalous 
son of Adam ever tumbled into a mistake 
quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives, if he 
imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pau- 
per at the gate. Not many, I say, but one. 
Even Ham and I here in our retreat are 
not alone ; we are embarrassed by the unin- 
vited spirit of the present; the adamant 
root of the mountain on whose summit we 


48 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


stand is based ineradicably in the low world. 
Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not quite 
right, — as, indeed, he proved in his proper 
person. I tell you, Shiel, I know whether 
Mary did or did not murder Darnley ; I 
know — as clearly, as precisely, as a man 
can know — that Beatrice Cenci was not 
‘guilty/ as certain recently discovered doc- 
uments ‘ prove ’ her, but that the Shelley 
version of the affair, though a guess, is 
the correct one. It is possible by taking 
thought to add one cubit — or say a hand, 
or a dactyl — to your stature ; you may 
develop powers slightly — very slightly, 
but distinctly, both in kind and degree — 
in advance of those of the mass who live in 
or about the same cycle of time in Avhich 
you live. But it is only when the powers 
to which I refer are shared by the mass — 
when what, for want of another term, I call 
the age of the Cultured Mood has at length 
arrived — that their exercise will become 
easy and familiar to the individual ; and 
who shall say what presciences, prisms. 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


49 


smnces, what introspective craft, Genie 
apocalypses shall not then become possible 
to the few who stand spiritually in the 
van of men ? 

All this, you will understand, I say as 
some sort of excuse for myself and for 
you for any hesitation we may have shown 
in loosening the very little puzzle you have 
placed before me, — one which we cer- 
tainly must not regard as difficult of solu- 
tion. Of course, looking at all the facts, 
the first consideration that must inevitably 
rivet the attention is that arising from 
the circumstance that Viscount Kandolph 
has strong reasons to wish his father dead. 
They are avowed enemies; he is the fiance 
of a princess whose husband he is probably 
too poor to become, though he will very 
likely be rich enough when his father dies. 
And so on. All that appears on the surface. 
On the other band, we — you and I — know 
the man : he is a person of gentle blood, 
as moral, we' suppose, as ordinary people, 
occupying a high station in the world. 


50 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


It is impossible to imagine that such a 
person would commit an assassination, or 
even countenance one, for any or all of 
the reasons that present themselves. In 
our hearts, with or without clear proof, we 
could hardly believe it of him. Earls’ 
sons do not, in fact, go about murdering 
people. Unless, then, w^e can so reason as 
to discover other motives, strong, adequate, 
irresistible, — and by ^ irresistible ’ I mean 
a motive which must be far stronger than 
even the love of life itself, — we should, I 
think, in fairness dismiss him from our 
mind. 

•^And yet it must be admitted that his 
conduct is not free of blame. He contracts 
a sudden intimacy with the acknowledged 
culprit, whom he does not seem to have 
known before. He meets her by night, cor- 
responds with her. Who and what is this 
woman ? I think we could not be far wrono- 

o 

in guessing some very old flame of Lord 
Pharanx’ of Theatre des Varieth type, 
whom he has supported for years, and from 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 51 

whom, hearing some story to her discredit, 
he threatens to withdraw his supplies. 
However that be, Randolph writes to 
.Cibras, — a violent woman, a woman of 
lawless passions, — assuring her that in 
four or five days she will be excluded 
from the will of his father; and in four or 
five days Cibras plunges a knife into his 
father’s bosom. It is a perfectly natural 
sequence, though, of course, the intention 
to produce by his w^ords the actual effect 
produced might have been absent; indeed, 
the letter of Lord Pharanx himself, had 
it been received, would have tended to 
produce that very effect, for it not only 
gives an excellent opportunity for convert- 
ing into action those evil thoughts which 
Randolph (thoughtlessly or guiltily) has 
instilled, but it further tends to rouse her 
passions by cutting off from her all hopes of 
favor. If we presume, then, as is only 
natural, that there was no such intention 
on the part of the earl, we may make the 
same presumption in the case of the son. 


52 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


Cibnis, however, never receives the earhs 
letter : on the morning of the same day 
she goes away to Bath, with the double 
object, I suppose, of purchasing a weapon, 
and creating an impression that she has 
left the country. How then does she 
know the exact locale of Lord Pharanx’ 
room? It is in an unusual part of the 
mansion ; she is unacquainted with any of 
the servants, a stranger to the district. 
Can it be possible that Randolph had told 
her? And here again, even in that case, 
you must bear in mind that Lord Pharanx 
also told her in his note, and you must 
recognize the possibility of the absence of 
evil intention on the part of the son. 
Indeed, I may go farther, and show you 
that in all but every instance in which 
his actions are in themselves oidre^ suspi- 
cious, they are rendered, noi less outre^ 
but less suspicious, by the fact that Lord 
Pharanx himself knew of them, shared in 
them. There was the cruel barbing of 
that balcony window ; about it the crudest 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


53 


thinker would argue thus to himself : 
^ Randolph practically incites Maude Cibras 
to murder his father on the 5th, and on 
the 6th he has that window so altered in 
order that, should she act on his sugges- 
tion, she will be caught on attempting to 
leave the room, while he himself, the .actual 
culprit, being discovered en flagrant delit, will 
escape every shadow of suspicion.’ But, on 
the other hand, we know that the altera- 
tion was made with Lord Pharanx’ consent, 
most likely on his initiative — for he leaves 
his favored room during a whole day for 
that very purpose. So, with the letter to 
Cibras on the 8th, Randolph despatches 
it, but the earl writes it. So with the 
disposal of the jewels in the apartment 
on the 9th. There had been some burg- 
laries in the neighborhood, and the sus- 
picion at once arises in the mind of the 
crude reasoner : could Randolph — finding 
now that Cibras has ‘ left the country, that, 
in fact, the tool he had expected to serve 
his ends has failed him — could he 


54 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


have thus brought those jewels there, 
and thus warned the servants of their 
presence, in the hope that the intelligence 
might so get abroad and lead to a burglary, 
in the course of which his father might 
lose his life ? There are evidences, you 
know, tending to show that the burglary 
did actually at last take place, and the 
suspicion is, in view of that, by no 
means unreasonable. And, yet, militating 
against it, is our knowledge that it was 
Lord Pharanx who ^ chose ’ to gather the 
jewels round him, that it was in his pres- 
ence that Randolph drew the attention of 
the servant to them. In the matter, at 
least, of the little political comedy, the 
son seems to have acted alone ; but you 
surely cannot rid yourself of the impres- 
sion that the radical speeches, the candi- 
dature, and the rest of it, formed all of 
them only a very elaborate, and withal 
clumsy, set of preliminaries to the class. 
Anything to make the perspective, the 
sequence, of that seem natural. But in 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


55 


the class, at any rate, we have the tacit 
acquiescence, or even the co-operation, of 
Lord Pharanx. You have described the 
conspiracy of quiet which, for some reason 
or other, w^as imposed on the household ; 
in that reign of silence the bang of a door, 
the fall of a plate, becomes a domestic 
tornado. But have you ever heard an 
agricultural laborer in clogs or heavy 
boots ascend a stair ? The noise is terrible. 
The tramp of an army of them through 
the house and overhead, probably jab- 
bering uncouthly together, would be insuf- 
ferable. Yet Lord Piiaranx seems to have 
made no objection ; the novel institution 
is set up in his own mansion, in an unusual 
part of it, probably against his own prin- 
ciples; but we hear of ilo murmur from 
him. On the fatal day,* too, the calm of 
the house is rudely broken by a consider- 
able commotion in Randolph’s room just 
overhead, caused by his preparation for 
^ a journey to London.’ But the usual 
angry remonstrance is^ not forthcoming 


56 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


from the master. And do you not see 
how all this more than acquiescence of 
Lord Pharanx in the conduct of his son 
deprives that conduct of half its signifi- 
cance, its intrinsic suspiciousness ? 

A hasty reasoner then would inevitably 
jump to the conclusion that Kandolph was 
guilty of something, — some evil intention, 
— though of precisely what he would re- 
main in doubt. But a more careful rea- 
soner would pause ; he would reflect that 
as the father was implicated in those acts, 
and as he was innocent of any such inden- 
tion, so might possibly, even probably, be 
the son. This, I take it, has been the view 
of the officials, whose logic is probably far 
in advance of their imagination. But sup- 
posing we can adduce one act, undoubtedly 
actuated by evil intention, on the part of 
Randolph, — one act in which his father 
certainly did not participate, — what follows 
next? Why, that we revert at once to the 
view of the hasty reasoner, and conclude 
that all the other acts in the same relation 


THE RACE OF ORYEN-. 


57 


were actuated by the same evil motive ; and, 
having reached that point, we shall be unable 
longer to resist the conclusion that those 
of them in which his father had a share 
might have sprung from a like motive in 
mind also; nor should the mere obvious 
impossibility of such a condition of things 
have even the very least influence on us, 
as thinkers, in causing us to close our mind 
against its logical possibility. I therefore 
inake the inference and pass on. 

Let us then see if we can by searching 
find out any absolutely certain deviation 
from right on the part of Randolph in 
which we may be quite sure that his father 
was not an abettor. At eight on the night 
of the murder it is dark ; there has been 
some snow, but the fall has ceased — how 
long before I know not, but so long that 
the interval becomes sufficiently apprecia- 
ble to cause remark. Now the party going 
round the house come on two tracks of 
feet meeting at an angle. Of one track 
we are merely told that it was made by 


58 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


the small foot of a woman, and of it we 
know no more ; of the other we learn that 
the feet were big and the boots clumsy, 
and, it is added, the marks were half oblit- 
erated by the snow. Two tilings then are 
clear : that the persons who made them 
came from different directions, and proba- 
bly made them at different times. That, 
alone, by the way, may be a sufficient an- 
swer to your question as to whether Cibras 
was in collusion with the ‘ burglars.’ But 
how does Randolph behave with reference 
to these tracks ? Though he carries the 
lantern, he fails to perceive the first, the 
woman’s, the discovery of which is made 
by a lad ; but the second, half hidden in 
the snow, he notices readily enough, and 
at once points it out. He explains that 
burglars have been on the war-path. ' But 
examine his horror of surprise when he 
hears that the window is closed, when he 
sees the woman’s bleeding fingers. He 
cannot help exclaiming, ^ My God ! what 
has happened now But why ‘ now ’ ? The 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


59 


word cannot refer to his father’s death, for 
that he knew, or guessed, beforehand, hav- 
ing heard the shot. Is it not rather the 
exclamation of a man whose sclieines des- 
tiny has complicated ? Besides, he should 
have expected to find the window closed ; 
no one except himself. Lord Pharanx, and 
the workman, who was now dead, knew 
the secret of its construction ; the burglars, 
therefore, having entered and robbed the 
room, one of them, intending to go out, 
would press on the ledge, and the sash 
would fall on his hand with what result we 
know. The others would then either break 
the glass and so escape, or pass through 
the house, or remain prisoners. That im- 
moderate surprise was therefore absurdly 
illogical, after seeing the burglar-track in 
the snow. But how, above all, do you 
account for Lord Pharanx’ silence during 
and after the burglars’ visit, — if there 
was a visit ? He was, you must remember, 
alive all that time ; they did not kill him, 
certainly they did not shoot him, for the 


60 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


shot is heard after the snow has ceased to 
fall, — that is, after, long after, they have 
left, since it was the falling snow that had 
half obliterated their tracks ; nor did they 
stab him, for to this Cibras confesses. Why, 
then, being alive and not gagged, did he 
give no token of the presence of his visit- 
ors ? There were, in fact, no burglars at 
Orven Hall that night.” 

“But the track! ” I cried ; the jewels 
found in the snow, the neckerchief! ” 

Zaleski smiled. 

“ Burglars,” he said, are plain, honest 
folk, who have a just notion of the- value 
of jewelry when they see it. They very 
properly regard it as mere foolish waste to 
drop precious stones about in the snow, 
and would refuse to company with a man 
weak enough to let fall his neckerchief on 
a cold night. The whole business of the 
burglars was a particularly inartistic trick, 
unworthy of its author. The mere facility 
with which Kandolph discovered the buried 
jewels by the aid of a dim lantern should 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


61 


have served as a hint to an educated police 
not afraid of facing the improbable. The 
jewels had been jput there with the object 
of throwing suspicion on the imaginary 
burglars; with the same design the catch 
of the window had been wrenched off, the 
sash purposely left open, the track made, 
the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx’ 
room. All this was deliberately done by 
some one, — would it be rash to say at 
once by whom ? 

Our suspicions having now lost their 
whole character of vagueness, and begun 
to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, 
let us examine the statements of Hester 
Dyett. Now% it is immediately compre- 
hensible to me that the evidence of this 
woman at the public examinations was 
looked at askance. There can be no doubt 
that she is a poor specimen of humanity, 
an undesirable servant, a peering, hyster- 
ical caricature of a woman. Her state- 
ments, if formally recorded, were not 
believed, or if believed, were believed with 


62 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


only half the mind. No attempt was made 
to deduce anything from them. But for 
my part, if I wanted specially reliable evi- 
dence as to any matter of fact, it is pre- 
cisely from such a being that I w’ould seek 
it. Let me draw you a picture of that 
class of intellect. They have a greed for 
information, but the information, to satisfy 
them, must relate to actualities ; they have 
no sympathy with fiction. It is from their 
impatience of what seems to be that springs 
their curiosity of what is. Clio is their 
Muse, and she alone. Their whole lust is 
to gather knowledge through a hole, their 
whole faculty is to peep. But they are des- 
titute of imagination, and dp not lie. In 
their passion for realities they would esteem 
it a sacrilege to distort history. They make 
straight for the substantial, the indubitable. 
For this reason the Peniculi and Ergasili of 
Plautus seem to me far more true to nature 
than the character of Paul Pry in Jerrold’s 
comedy. In one instance, indeed, the evi 
dence of Hester Dyett appears, on the sur- 


THE KACE OF ORVEN. 


63 


face of it, to be quite false. She declares 
that she sees a round white object moving 
upward in the room. But the night being 
gloomy, her taper having gone out, she must 
have been standing in a dense darkness. 
How then could she see this object ? Her 
evidence, it was argued, must be designedly 
false, or else (as she was in an ecstatic con- 
dition) the result of an excited fancy. But 
I have stated that such persons, nervous, 
neurotic even as they may be, are not fan- 
ciful. I therefore accept her evidence as 
true. And now, mark the consequence of 
that acceptance. I am driven to admit 
that there must, from some source, have 
been light in the room — a light faint 
enough, and diffused enough to escape the 
notice of Hester herself This being so, it 
must have proceeded from around, from 
below, or from above. There are no other 
alternatives. Around these was nothing 
but the darkness of the night ; the room 
beneath, we know, was also in darkness. 
The light then came from the room above, 


64 


PRINCE ZALESKl. 


— from the mechanic class-room. But there 
is only one possible means by which the 
light from an upper can diffuse a lower 
room. It must be by a hole in the inter- 
mediate boards. We are thus driven to 
the discovery of an aperture of some sort 
in the flooring of that upper chamber. 
Given this, the mystery of the round white 
object ‘driven’ upward disappears. We at 
once ask, why not drawn upward through 
the newly discovered aperture by a string 
too small to be visible in the gloom ? As- 
suredly it was drawn upward. And now, 
having established a hole in the ceiling of 
the room in which Hester stands, is it un- 
reasonable — even without further evi- 
dence — to suspect another in the flooring ? 
But we actually have this further evidence. 
As she rushes to the door she falls, faints, 
and fractures the lower part of her leg. 
Had she fallen over some object, as you 
supposed, the result might have been a 
fracture also, but in a different part of the 
body ; being where it was, it could only 


THE RACE OF ORYEN. 


65 


have been caused by placing the foot inad- 
vertently in a hole while the rest of the 
body was in rapid motion. But this gives 
us an approximate idea of the size of the 
lower hole ; it was at least big enough to 
admit the foot and lower leg, big enough, 
therefore, to admit that ^ good-sized ball of 
cotton ^ of which the woman speaks, and 
from the lower we are able to conjecture 
the size of the upper. But how comes it 
that these holes are nowhere mentioned in 
the evidence ? . It can only be because no 
one ever saw them. Yet the rooms must 
have been examined by the police, who, if 
they existed, must have seen them. They 
therefore did not exist; that is to say, the 
pieces which had been removed from the 
floorings had by that time been neatly re- 
placed, and, in the case of the lower one, 
covered by the carpet, the removal of 
which had caused so much commotion in 
Randolph’s room on the fatal day. Hester 
Dyett would have been able to notice and 
bring at least one of the apertures forward 


66 


PRINCE ZALESKL 


in evidence, but she fainted before she had 
time to find out the cause of her fall, and 
an hour later it was, you remember, Ean- 
dolph himself who bore her from the room. 
But should not the aperture in the top 
floor have been observed by the class ? 
Undoubtedly, if its position was in the open 
space in the middle of the room. But it 
was not observed, and therefore its position 
was not there, but in the only other place 
left — behind the apparatus used in demon- 
stration. That, then, was one useful object 
which the apparatus — and with it the 
elaborate hypocrisy of class and speeches 
and candidature — served : it -was made 
to act as a curtain, a screen. But had it 
no other purpose ? That question we may 
answer when we know its name and its 
nature. And it is not beyond our powers 
to conjecture this with something like cer- 
tainty. For the only ^ machines ’ possible 
to use in illustration of simple mechanics 
are the screw, the wedge, the scale, the 
lever, the wheel-and-axle, and Atwood's 


THE KACE OF OKVEX. G7 

machine. The mathematical principles 
which any of these exemplify would, of 
course, be incomprehensible to such a class, 
but the first five most of all ; and as there 
would naturally be some slight pretence of 
trying to make the learners understand, I 
therefore select the last : and this selection 
is justified when we remember that on the 
shot being heard, Randolph leans for sup- 
port on the ‘ machine,' and stands in its 
shadow, but any of the others would be 
too small to tlirow any appreciable shadow, 
except one, the wheel-and-axle, and that 
one would hardly afford support to a tall 
man in the erect position. The Atwood's 
machine is therefore forced on us. As to 
its construction, it is, as you are aware, 
composed of two upright posts, with a 
cross-bar fitted with pulleys and strings, 
and is intended to show the motion of 
bodies acting under a constant force — the 
force of gravity, to wit. But now consider 
all the really glorious uses to which those 
same pulleys may be turned in lowering 


68 


PRINCE ZALESKl. 


and lifting, unobserved, that ‘ ball of cot- 
ton ’ through the two apertures, while the 
other strings with the weiglits attached are 
dangling before the dull eyes of the peas- 
ants. 1 need only point out that when the 
whole company trooped out of the room, 
Kandolph was the last to leave it, and it is 
not now difficult to conjecture why. 

‘‘ Of what, then, have we convicted Ran- 
dolph ? For one thing, we have shown 
that by marks of feet in the snow, prepa- 
ration was made beforehand for obscuring 
the cause of the earl’s death. That death 
must therefore have been at least expected, 
foreknown. Thus we convict him of ex- 
pecting it. And then, by an independent 
line of deduction, we can also discover the 
means by which he expected it to occur. It 
is clear that he did not expect it to occur 
when it did by the hand of Maude Cibras, 
for this is proved by his knowledge that 
she had left the neighborhood, by his 
evidently genuine astonishment at the 
sight of the closed window, and, above all. 


THE RACE OF ORYEN. 


69 


by his truly morbid desire to establish a 
substantial, an irrefutable alibi for himself, 
by going to Plymouth on the day when 
there was every reason to suppose she 
would do the deed, — that is, on the 8th, 
the day of the earl’s invitation. On the 
fatal night, indeed, the same morbid eager- 
ness to build up a clear alibi is observable, 
for he surrounds himself with a crowd of 
witnesses in the upper chamber. But that, 
you will admit, is not nearly so perfect a one 
as a journey, say to Plymouth, would have 
been. Why, then, expecting the death, did 
he not take some such journey ? Ob- 
viously because on this occasion his per- 
sonal presence was necessary. When, in 
conjunction with this, we recall the fact that 
during the intrigues with Cibras the lec- 
tures were discontinued, and again re- 
sumed immediately on her unlooked-for 
departure, we arrive at the conclusion that 
the means by which Lord Pharanx’ death 
was expected to occur was the personal 
presence of Randolph in conjunction with 


70 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


the political speeches, the candidature, the 
class, the apparatus. 

But though he stands condemned of 
foreknowing, and being in some sort con- 
nected with, his father’s death, I can no- 
where find any indication of his having 
personally accomplished it, or even of his 
ever having had any such intention. The 
evidence is evidence of complicity, and 
nothing more. And yet, and yet, even of 
this we began by acquitting him, unless we 
could discover, as I said, some strong, 
adequate, altogether irresistible motive for 
such complicity. Failing this, w^e ought 
to admit that at some point our argument 
has played us false, and led us into con- 
clusions wholly at variance with our certain 
knowdedge of the principles underlying 
human conduct in general. Let us there- 
fore seek for such a motive — something 
deeper than personal enmity, stronger than 
personal ambition, than the love of life itself! 
And now, tell me, at the time of the oc- 
currence of this mystery, was the whole 


THE RACE OF ORVEJS". 71 

past history of the House of Orven fully 
investigated ? ” 

Not to my knowledge/’ I answered ; 
in the papers there were, of course, 
sketches of the earl’s career, but that I 
think was all.” 

Yet it cannot be that their past was 
unknown, but only that it was ignored. 
Long, I tell you, long and often, have I 
pondered on that history, and sought to 
trace with what ghastly secret has been 
pregnant the destiny, gloomful as Erebus 
and the murk of black-peplosed Nux, which 
for centuries has hung its pall over the men 
of this ill-fated house. Now at last I know. 
Dark, dark, and red with gore and horror, 
is that history; down the silent corridors 
of the ages have these blood-soaked sons of 
Atreus fled shrieking before the pursuing 
talons of the dread Eumenides. The first 
earl received his patent in 1535 from the 
eighth Henry. Two years later, though 
noted as a rabid ‘ king’s man,’ he joined the 
Pilgrimage of Grace against his master, and 


72 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


was soon after executed with Darcy and 
some other lords. His age was then fifty. 
His son, meantime, had served in the king’s 
army under Norfolk. It is remarkable, by 
the way, that females have all along been 
rare in the family, and that in no in- 
stance has there been more than one son. 
The second earl, under the sixth Edward, 
suddenly threw up a civil post, hastened 
to the army, and fell at the age of forty 
at the battle of Pinkie in 1547. He was 
accompanied by his son. The third in 
1557, under Mary, renounced the Catholic 
faith, to which, both before and since, the 
family have passionately clung, and suf- 
fered (at the age of forty) the last penalty. 
The fourth earl died naturally, but sud- 
denly, in his bed, at the age of fifty, during 
the winter of 1566. At midnight of the 
same daij he was laid in the grave by his 
son. This son was later on, in 1591, seen 
by his son to fall from a lofty balcony at 
Orven Hall, while walking in his sleep at 
high noon-day. Then for some time noth- 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


73 


ing happens ; but the eighth earl dies 
mysteriously in 1651 at the age of forty- 
five. A fire occurring in his room, he 
leaped from a window to escape the flames. 
Some of his limbs were thereby fractured, 
but he was in a fair way to recovery when 
there was a sudden relapse, soon ending in 
death. He was found to have been poi- 
soned by radix aconiti indica, a rare Arabian 
poison, not known in Europe at that time 
except to samnts, and first mentioned by 
Acosta some months before. An attendant 
was accused and tried, but acquitted. The 
then son of the House was a Fellow of the 
newdy founded Royal Society, and author 
of a now forgotten work on Toxicology, 
which, however, I have read. No suspi- 
cion, of course, fell on him ! ” 

As Zaleski proceeded with this retrospect, 
I could not but ask myself with stirrings of 
the most genuine wonder, whether he could 
possess this intimate knowledge of all the 
great families of Europe! It was as if 
he had spent a part of his life in mak- 


74 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


ing special study of the history of the 
Orvens. 

In the same manner,” he went on, I 
could detail the annals of the family from 
that time to the present. But all through 
they have been marked by the same latent 
tragic elements ; and I have said enough to 
show you that in each of the tragedies 
there was invariably something large, leer- 
ing, something of which the mind demands 
explanation, but seeks in vain to find it. 
Now we need no longer seek. Destiny 
did not design that the last Lord of Orven 
should any more hide from the world the 
guilty secret of his race. It was the will 
of the gods — and he betrayed himself. 
^ Eeturn,’ he writes, ^ the beginning of the 
end is come.’ What end ? The end — per- 
fectly well known to Randolph, needing no 
explanation for him. The old, old end, 
which in the ancient dim time led the first 
lord, loyal still at heart, to forsake his king ; 
and another, still devout, to renounce his 
cherished faith ; and yet another to set fire 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


75 


to the home of his ancestors. You have 
called the two last scions of the family ‘ a 
proud and selfish pair of beings : ’ proud 
they were and selfish too, but you are in 
error if you think their selfishness a personal 
one ; on the contrary, they were singularly 
oblivious of self in the ordinary sense of 
the word. Theirs was the pride and the 
selfishness of race. What consideration, 
think you, other than the weal of his house, 
could induce Lord Randolph to take on 
himself the shame — for as such he certainly 
regards it — of a conversion to radicalism? 
He would, I am convinced, have died 
rather than make this pretence for merely 
personal ends. But he does it — and the 
reason ? It is because he has received that 
awful summons from home ; because ^ the 
end ’ is daily coming nearer, and it must 
not find him unprepared to meet it; it is 
because Lord Pharanx’ senses are becom- 
ing too acute ; because the clatter of the ser- 
vants’ knives at the other end of the house 
inflames him to madness ; because his ex- 


76 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


cited palate can no longer endure any food 
but the subtlest delicacies ; because Hester 
Dyett is able from the posture in which he 
sits to conjecture that he is intoxicated ; 
because, in fact, he is on the brink of the 
dreadful malady which physicians call ‘ Gen- 
eral Faralym of the Insane.^ You remember 
I took from your hands the newspaper con- 
taining the earl’s letter to Cibras in order 
to read it with my own eyes. I had my 
reasons, and I was justified. That letter con- 
tains three mistakes in spelling : ^ here ’ is 
printed ^ hear,’ ^ pass ’ appears as ^ pas,’ and 
‘ room ’ as ^ rume.’ Printers’ errors, yofi say ? 
But not so — one might be, two in that short 
paragraph could hardly be, three would be 
impossible. Search the whole paper through 
and I think you will not find another. Let 
us reverence the theory of probabilities: the 
errors were the writer’s, not the printer’s. 
General Paralysis of the Insane is known 
to have this effect on the writing. It 
attacks its victims about the period of 
middle age — the age at which the deaths 


THE RACE OF ORVEN. 


77 


of all the Orvens who died mysteriously 
occurred. Finding then that the dire heri- 
tage of his race — the heritage of madness 
— is falling or fallen on him, he summons 
his son from India. On himself he passes 
sentence of death : it is the tradition of the 
family, the secret vow of self-destruction 
handed down through ages from father to 
son. But he must have aid : in these days 
it is difficult for a man to commit the sui- 
cidal act without detection — and if mad- 
ness is a disgrace to the race, equally so is 
suicide. Besides, the family is to be en- 
riched by the insurances on his life, and is 
thereby to be allied with royal blood ; but 
the money will be lost if the suicide be 
detected. Randolph therefore returns and 
blossoms into a popular candidate. 

' For a time he is led to abandon his 
original plans by the appearance of Maude 
Cibras; he hopes that she may be made to 
destroy the earl; but when she fails him, 
he recurs to it — recurs to it all suddenly, 
for Lord Pharanx’ condition is rapidly be- 


78 


PEINCE ZALESKI. 


coming critical, patent to all ejes, could 
any eye see him — so much so that on the 
last day none of the servants are allowed 
to enter his room. AYe must therefore 
regard Cibras as a mere addendum to, an 
extraneous element in, the tragedy, not as 
an integral part of it. She did not shoot 
the noble lord, for she had no pistol ; nor 
did Randolph, for he was at a distance 
from the bed of death, surrounded by wit- 
nesses ; nor did the imaginary burglars. 
The earl therefore shot himself ; and it was 
the small globular silver pistol, such as this,” 
here Zaleski drew a little embossed Vene- 
tian weapon from a drawer near him, that 
appeared in the gloom to the excited Hes- 
ter as a ‘ ball of cotton,’ while it was being 
drawn upward by the Atwood’s machine. 
But if the earl shot himself he could not 
have done so after being stabbed to the 
heart. Maude Cibras, therefore, stabbed a' 
dead man. She would, of course, have 
ample time for stealing into the room and 
doing so after the shot was fired, and before 


THE RACE OF ORYEN. 


79 


the party reached the balcony window, on 
account of the delay on the stairs in pro- 
curing a second light ; in going to the earl’s 
door ; in examining the tracks, and so on. 
But having stabbed a dead man, she is not 
guilty of murder. The message I just now 
sent by Ham was one addressed to the 
Home Secretary, telling him on no account 
to let Cibras die to-morrow. He well knows 
my name, and will hardly be silly enough 
to suppose me capable of using words with- 
out meaning. It will be perfectly easy to 
prove my conclusions, for the pieces re- 
moved from, and replaced in, the floorings 
can still be detected if looked for ; the pis- 
tol is still, no doubt, in Kandolph’s room, 
and its bore can be compared with the 
bullet found in Lord Pharanx’ brain; above 
all, the jewels stolen by the ‘ burglars ’ are 
still safe in some cabinet of the new earl, 
and may readily be discovered. I therefore 
expect that the denoument will now take a 
somewhat different turn.” 

That the denoument did take a differ- 


80 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


ent turn, and pretty strictly in accord- 
ance with Zaleski’s forecast, is now matter 
of history, and the incidents, therefore, 
need no further comment from me in this 
place. 


THE STONE OF THE EDMUNDS- 
BURY MONKS. 


\ 



THE STONE OF THE EDMUNDS- 
BURY MONKS. 

USSIA/’ said Prince Zaleski to me 



one day, when I happened to be 
on a visit to him in his darksome sanctu- 
ary — Russia may be regarded as land 
surrounded by ocean ; that is to say, she is 
an island. In the same way, it is sheer 
gross irrelevancy to speak of Britain as an 
island, unless indeed the word be under- 
stood as a mere modus loquendi, arising out 
of a rather poor geographical pleasantry. 
Britain in reality, is a small continent. 
Near her — a little to the south-east — is 
situated the large island of Europe. Thus, 
the enlightened French traveller passing to 
these shores should commune within him- 
self : ^ I now cross to the Mainland ; ’ and 


84 


PKINCE ZALESKI. 


retracing his steps : ‘ I now return to the 
fragment rent by wrack and earthshock 
from the Mother-country/ And this I say 
not in the way of paradox, but as the ex- 
pression of a sober truth. I have in my 
mind merely the relative depth and extent 
— the non-insiilaritu , in fact — of the impres- 
sions made by the several nations on the 
world. But this island of Europe has her- 
self an island of her own : the name of it, 
Russia. She, of all lands, is the terra incog- 
nita, the unknown land ; till quite lately she 
was more, — she was the undiscovered, the 
unsuspected land. She has a literature, you 
know, and a history, and a language, and 
a purpose — but of all this the world has 
hardly so much as heard. Indeed, she, and 
not any Antarctic Sea whatever, is the real 
Ultima Thule of modern times, the true 
Island of Mystery.” 

I reproduce these remarks of Zaleski 
here, not so much on account of the 
splendid tribute to my country contained 
in them, as because it ever seemed to me 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 85 

— and especially in connection with the 
incident I am about to recall — that in 
this respect at least he was a genuine son 
of Russia ; if she is the Land, so truly 
was he the Man, of Mystery. I who 
knew him best alone knew that it was 
impossilire to know him. He was a being 
little of the present : with one arm he 
embraced the whole past ; the fingers of 
the other heaved on the vibrant pulse of 
the future. He seemed to me — I say 
it deliberately and with forethought — to 
possess the unparalleled power not merely 
of disentangling in retrospect, but of unrav- 
elling in prospect, and 1 have known him 
to relate coming events with unimaginable 
minuteness of precision. He was nothing 
if not superlative : his diatribes, now cul- 
minating in a very extravaganza of hyper- 
bole, — now sailing with loose wing through 
the downy, witched, Dutch cloud-heaps of 
some quaintest tramontane Nephelococcugia 
of thought — now laying down law of the 
Medes for the actual world of to-day — had 


86 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


oft-times the strange effect of bringing 
back to iny mind the very singular old- 
epic epithet, 'qvefxoev — airi/ — as applied to 
human thought. The mere grip of his mem- 
ory was not simply extraordinary, it had in 
it a token, a hint, of the strange, the pythic, 
— nay, the sibylline. And as his reflect- 
ing intellect, moreover, had all the light- 
ness of foot of a chamois kid, unless you 
could contrive to follow each dazzlingly 
swift successive step, by the sum of which 
he attained his Alp-heights he inevitably 
left on you the astounding, the confounding 
impression of mental omnipresence. 

I had brought with me a certain docu- 
ment, a massive book bound in iron and 
leather, the diary of one Sir Jocelin Saul. 
This I had abstracted from a gentleman 
of my acquaintance, the head of a firm 
of inquiry agents in London, into whose 
hand, only the day before, it had come. 
A distant neighbor of Sir Jocelin, hearing 
by chance of bis extremity, had invoked 
the assistance of this firm ; but the aged 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 87 

baronet, being in a state of the utmost 
feebleness, terror, and indeed hysterical 
incoherence, had been able to utter no 
word in explanation of his condition or 
wishes, and, in silent abandonment, had 
merely handed the book to the agent. 

A day or two after I had reached the 
desolate old mansion which the prince 
occupied, knowing that he might sometimes 
be induced to take an absorbing interest 
in questions that had proved themselves 
too profound, or too intricate, for ordinary 
solution, I asked him if he was willing to 
hear the details read out from the diary, 
and on his assenting, I proceeded to do so. 

The brief narrative had reference to a 
very large and very valuable oval gem 
enclosed in the substance of a golden 
chalice ; which chalice, in the monastery 
of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centur- 
ies long within the Loculus, or inmost 
coffin, wherein reposed the body of St. 
Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the 
cup (which was composed of two equal parts 


88 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


connected by minute hinges) sprang open, 
and in a hollow space at the bottom was 
disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may 
say, was lineally connected with — though, 
of course, not descendant from — that same 
Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the 
Edmundsbury convent, who wrote the 
now so celebrated Jocelini Chronica: and 
the chalice had fallen into the possession 
of the family, seemingly at some time prior 
to the suppression of the monastery about 
1537. On it was inscribed in old English 
characters of unknown date the words : 
Shulde this Ston staleii bee, 

Or shuld it cliaunges dre, 

The Houss of Sawl and hys Hed anoon shal de.” 

The stone itself was an intaglio, and had 
engraved on its surface the figure of a 
mythological animal, together with some 
nearly^ obliterated letters, of which the 
only ones remaining legible were those 
forming the word* “ Has.” As a sure pre- 
caution against the loss of the gem, another 
cup had been made and engraved in an 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 


89 


exactly similar manner, inside of which, to 
complete the delusion, another stone of the 
same size and cut, but of comparatively 
valueless material, had been placed. 

Sir Jocelin Saul, a man of intense 
nervosity, lived his life alone in a remote 
old manor-house in Suffolk, his only 
companion being a person of Eastern origin, 
named Ul-Jabal. The baronet had con- 
sumed his vitality in the life-long attempt 
to sound the too fervid Maelstrom of 
Oriental research, and his mind had perhaps 
caught from his studies a tinge of their 
morbidness, their esotericism, their insanity. 
He had for some years past been engaged 
in the task of writing a stupendous work 
on Pre-Zoroastian Theogonies, in which, it 
is to be supposed Ul-Jabal acted somewhat 
in the capacity of secretary, but I will give 
verbatim the extracts from his diary : — 
June 11. — This is my birthday. Seventy 
years ago exactly 1 slid from the belly' of 
the great Dark into this Light and Life. 
My God ! My God ! it is briefer than the 


90 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day 
trance. Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly — 
seemed to have been looking forward to it 
— and pointed out that seventy is of the 
fateful numbers, its only factors being 
seven, five, and two: the last denoting 
the duality of Birth and Death ; five. 
Isolation; seven. Infinity. I informed 
him that this was also my father’s birth- 
day ; and his father’s ; and repeated the 
oft-told tale of how the latter, just seventy 
years ago to-day, w^alking at twilight by 
the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of 
himself sitting on a grave-stone, and died 
five weeks later riving with the pangs of 
hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two 
huge rows of teeth. 

What is his peculiar interest in the 
Edmundsbury chalice ? On each succes- 
sive birthday when the cup has been pro- 
duced, he has asked me to show him the 
stone. Without any well-defined reason 
I have always declined, but to-day I 
yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 91 

depth, and then asked if 1 had no idea 
what the inscription ^ Has ’ meant. I 
informed him that it was one of the lost 
secrets of the world. 

June 15. — Some new element has en- 
tered into our existence here. Something 
threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace 
against my sanity and my life. It is as if 
the garment which enwraps me has grown 
too hot, too heavy for me. K notable drow- 
siness has settled on my brain — a drowsi- 
ness in which thought, though slow, is a 
thousand fold more fiery vivid than ever. 
Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, 
thy chosen child ! 

June 18. — Ul-Jabal ? — that man is the 
very Devil incarnate ! 

June 19. — So much for my bounty, all 
my munificence, to this poisonous worm. I 
picked him up on the heights of the Moun- 
tain of Lebanon, a cultured savage among 
cultured savages, and brought him here to 
be a prince of thought by my side. What 
though his plundered wealth — the debt I 


92 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


owe him — has saved me from a sort of 
ruin ? Have not I instructed him in the 
sweet secret of Reason ? 

I lay back on my bed in the lonely 
morning watches, my soul heavy as with 
the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid 
vision knew that he had entered my apart- 
ment. In the twilight gloom his glittering 
rows of shark’s teeth seemed impacted on 
my eyeball, — I saw them^ and nothing 
else. I was not aware when he vanished 
from the room. But at daybreak I crawled 
on hands and knees to the cabinet contain- 
ing the chalice. The viperous murderer! 
He has stolen my gem, well knowing that 
with it he has stolen my life. The stone is 
gone — gone, my precious gem. A weak- 
ness overtook me, and I lay for many 
dreamless hours naked on the marble floor. 

Does the fool think to hide aught from 
my eyes ? Can he imagine that I shall not 
recover m}^ precious gem, my stone of Saul ? 

June 20. — Ah, Ul-Jabal, — my brave, 
my noble Son of the Prophet of God ! He 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 


93 


has replaced the stone ! He would not slay 
an aged man. The yellow ray of his eye, it 
is but the gleam of the great thinker, not 
— not — the gleam of the assassin. Again, 
as I lay in semi-somnolence, I saw him 
enter my room, this time more distinctly. 
He went up to the cabinet. Shaking the 
chalice in the dawning, some hours after he 
had left, I heard with delight the rattle of 
the stone. I might have known he would 
replace it ; I should not have doubted his 
clemency to a poor man like me. But the 
strange being ! he has taken the other stone 
from the other cup — a thing of little value 
to any man ! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I ? 

‘‘Jiine2\. — Merciful Lord in Heaven! 
he has not replaced it — not it — but another 
instead of it. To-day I actually opened 
the chalice and saw. He has put a stone 
there, the same in size, in cut, in engrav- 
ing, but different in color, in quality, in 
value — a stone I have never seen before. 
How has he obtained it — whence ? I must 
brace myself to probe, to watch ; I must 


94 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


turn myself into an eye to search this 
devil’s-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunning 
Reason of mine hangs in the balance. 

June 22. — Just now he offered me a cup 
of wine. 1 almost dashed it to the ground 
before him. But he looked steadfastly into 
my eye. I flinched : and drank — drank. 

Years ago, when, as I remember, we 
were at Balbec, I saw him one day make 
an almost tasteless preparation out of pure 
black nicotine, which in mere wanton lust 
he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers 
by the Caspian to drink. But the fiend 
would surely never dream of giving to me 
that browse of hell — to me an aged man, 
and a thinker, a seer. 

June 23. The mysterious, the unfathom- 
able Ul-Jabal ! Once again, as I lay in 
heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, 
calm and noiseless as a spirit, the sanctity 
of my chamber. Serene on the swaying 
air, which, radiant with soft beams of ver- 
mil and violet light, rocked me into variant 
visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 95 

him unmoved. The man has replaced the 
valueless stone in the modern-made chalice, 
and has now stolen the false stone from 
the other, which he himself put there ! In 
patience will I possess this my soul, and 
watch what shall betide. My eyes shall 
know no slumber ! 

Jane 24. — No more — no more shall I 
drink wine from the hand of Ul-Jabal. My 
knees totter beneath the weight of my 
lean body. Daggers of lambent fever race 
through my brain incessant. Some fibril- 
lary twitchings at the right angle of the 
mouth have also arrested my attention. 

Jane 2^. — He has dared at open mid- 
day to enter my room. I watched him from 
an angle of the stairs pass along the" corridor 
and open my door. But for the terrifying, 
death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I 
should have faced the traitor then, and told 
him that I knew all his treachery. Did I 
say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings 
at the right angle of my mouth, and a 
brain on fire ? I have ceased to write my 


96 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


book — the more the pity for the world, 
not for me. 

June 26. — Marvellous to tell, the traitor, 
Ul-Jabel, has now placed another stone in 
the Edmundsbury chalice — also identical 
in nearly every respect with the original 
gem. This, then, was the object of his entry 
into my room yesterday. So that he has 
first stolen the real stone and replaced it 
by another ; then he has stolen this other 
and replaced it by yet another ; he has 
beside stolen the valueless stone from the 
modern chalice, and then replaced it. 
Surely a man gone rabid, a man gone danc- 
ing, foaming, raving mad ! 

June 28. — I have now set myself to 
the task of recovering my jewel. It is here, 
and I shall find it. Life against life — and 
which is the best life, mine or this accursed 
Ishmaelite’s ? If need be, I will do murder 
— I, with this withered hand — so that I 
get back the heritage which is mine. 

To-day, when I thought he was wan- 
dering in the park, I stole into his room, 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 97 

locking the door on the inside. I trembled 
exceedingly, knowing that his eyes are in 
every place. I ransacked the chamber, 
dived among his clothes, but found no stone. 
One singular thing in a drawer I saw: a long, 
white beard, and a wig of long and snow- 
white hair. As I passed out of the chamber, 
lo, he stood face to face with me at the 
door in the passage. My heart gave one 
bound and then seemed wholly to cease its 
travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, 
weaker than a bruised reed ! When I woke 
from my swoon he was supporting me in 
his arms. ^ Now,’ he said, grinning down 
at me, ‘ now you have at last delivered all 
into my hands.’ He left me, and I saw him 
go into his room and lock the door upon 
himself. What is it I have delivered into 
the madman’s hands? 

July 1. — Life against life — and his, the 
young, the stalwart, rather than mine, the 
mouldering, the sere. I love life. Not 
yet am I ready to weigh anchor and reeve 
halliard and turn my prow over the watery 
7 


98 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


p.aths of the wine-brown deeps. Oh, no! 
Not yet. Let him die. Many and many are 
the days in which I shall yet see the light, 
walk, think. I am averse to end the number 
of my years : there is even a feeling in me 
at times that this worn body shall never, 
never taste of death. The chalice predicts 
indeed that I and my house shall end when 
the stone is lost — a mere fiction an 

idler’s dream then^ but now — now — that 
the prophecy has stood so long a part of 
the reality of things, and a fact among facts 
— no longer fiction, but adamant, stern as 
the very word of God. Do I not feel hourly 
since it has gone how the surges of life 
ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, 
nay, but there is hope. I have here beside 
me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene 
steel, insinuous to pierce and to hew, wdth 
which in a street of Bethlehem I saw a 
Syrian’s head cleft open — a gallant stroke 1 
The edges of this I have made bright and 
white for a nuptial of blood. 

Juli/ 2.. — I spent the whole of the last 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 


99 


night in searching every nook and crack of 
the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. 
At times I thought Ul-Jabal was watching 
me, and would pounce out and murder me. 
Convulsive tremors shook my frame like 
earthquake. Ah, me ! I fear I am all too 
frail for this work. Yet dear is the love 
of life. 

July 7. — The last days I have passed in 
carefully searching the grounds, with the 
lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found 
pretexts for following me, and I am confi- 
dent that every step I took was known 'to 
him. No sign anywhere of the grass hav- 
ing been disturbed. Yet my lands are wide, 
and I cannot be sure. The burden of this 
mighty task is greater than I can bear. I 
am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I 
not slay my enemy, and make an end? 

July 8. — Ul-Jabal has been in my 
chamber again ! I watched him through 
a crack in the panelling. His form was 
hidden by the bed, but I could see his hand 
reflected in the great mirror opposite the 


100 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


door. First, I cannot guess why, he 
moved to a point in front of the mirror 
the chair in which I sometimes sit. He 
then went to the box in which lie my few 
garments, and opened it. Ah ! I have the 
stone — safe — safe ! He fears my cunning, 
ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one 
place where I would be least likely to seek 
it — in my own trunk ! And yet I dread, 
most intensely I dread, to look. 

July 9. — The stone, alas, is not there ! 
At the last moment he must have changed 
his purpose. Could his wondrous sensi- 
tiveness of intuition have made him feel 
that my eyes were looking in on him ? 

July 10. — In the dead of night I knew 
that a stealthy foot had gone past my door. 
I rose and threw a mantle round me ; I 
put on my head my cap of fur; I took 
the tempered blade in my hands; then 
crept out into the dark, and followed. 
Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which re- 
vealed him to me. My feet were bare, 
but he wore felted slippers, which to my 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 101 

unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. 
He descended the stairs to the bottom of 
the house, while 1 crouched behind him in 
the deepest gloom of the corners and walls. 
At the bottom he walked into the pan- 
try : there stopped, and turned the lantern 
full in the direction of the spot where I 
stood ; but so agilely did I slide behind a 
pillar, that he could not have seen me. In 
the pantry he lifted the trap-door, and de- 
scended still further into the vaults beneath 
the house. Ah ! the vaults, — the long, 
the tortuous, the darksome vaults, — how 
had 1 forgotten them ? Still I followed, 
rent by seismic shocks of terror. I had 
not forgotten the weapon : could I creep 
near enough, I felt that I might plunge it 
into the marrow of his back. He opened 
the iron door of the first vault and passed in. 
If I could lock him in ? — but he held the 
key. On and on he wound his way, hold- 
ing the lantern near the ground, his head ' 
bent down. The thought came to me then^ 
that, had I but the courage, one swift 


102 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


sweep, and all were over. I crept closer, 
closer. Suddenly he turned round, and 
made a quick step in my direction. I saw 
his eyes, the murderous grin of his jaw. I 
know not if he saw me — thought forsook 
me. The weapon fell with clatter and 
clangor from my grasp, and in panic fright 
I fled with extended arms and the head- 
long swiftness of a stripling, through the 
black labyrinths of the caverns, through 
the vacant corridors of the house, till I 
reached my chamber, the door of which 
I had time to fasten on myself before I 
dropped, gasping, panting for very life, on 
the floor. 

^^July 11. — I had not the courage to see 
Ul-Jabal to-day. I have remained locked 
in my chamber all the time without food 
or water. My tongue cleaves to the roof 
of my mouth. 

July 12. — I took heart and crept down- 
stairs. 1 met him in the study. He 
smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing 
had happened between us. Oh, our old 


THE EDMUNDSBUEY MONKS. 103 

friendship, how it has turned into bitterest 
hate ! I had taken the false stone from 
the Edmundsburj chalice and put it in the 
pocket of my brown gown, with the bold 
intention of showing it to him, and asking 
him if he knew aught of it. But when I 
faced him, my courage failed again. We 
drank together and ate together as in the 
old days of love. 

July 13. — I cannot think that I have 
not again imbibed some soporiferous drug. 
A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my 
brain till late in the day. When 1 awoke 
my thoughts were in wild distraction, and a 
most peculiar condition of my skin held me 
fixed before the mirror. It is dry as parch- 
ment, and brown as the leaves of autumn. 

‘^July 14. — Ul-Jabal is gone ! And I am 
left, a lonely, a desolate old man ! He said, 
though I swore it was false, that I had 
grown to mistrust him ! that I was hiding 
something from him ! that he could live 
with me no more ! No more, he said, 
should I see his face ! The debt 1 owe him 


104 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


he would forgive. He has taken one small 
parcel with him, — and is gone ! 

July 15. — Gone ! Gone ! In mazeful 
dream I wander with uncovered head far 
and wide over my domain, seeking I know 
not what. The stone he has with him — 
the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life- 
surge ebbing, ebbing in my heart.’^ 

Here the manuscript abruptly ended. 
Prince Zaleski had listened as 1 read 
aloud, lying back on his Moorish couch and 
breathing slowly from his lips a heavy red- 
dish vapor, which he imbibed from a very 
small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as 
far as I could see in the green-gray crepus- 
cular atmosphere of the apartment, was 
expressionless. But when I had finished 
he turned fully round on me, and said : 

You perceive, I hope, the sinister 
meaning of all this ? ” 

Has it a meaning ? ” 

Zaleski smiled. 

“ Can you doubt it? In the shape of a 
cloud, the pitch of a thrush’s note, the 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MOJ^KS. 105 

nuance of a sea-shell you would find — had 
you only insight enough^ inductive and de- 
ductive cunning enough — not only a mean- 
ing, but, I am convinced, a quite endless 
significance. Undoubtedly, in a human 
document of this kind there is a meaning ; 
and I may say at once that this meaning is 
entirely transparent to me. Pity only that 
you did not read the diary to me before.’’ 

Why ? ” 

Because we might, between us, have 
prevented a crime, and saved a life. The 
last entry in the diary was made on the 
fifteenth of July. What day is this? ” 

This is the twentieth.” 

“ Then I would wager a thousand to one 
that we are too late. There is still, how- 
ever, the one chance left. The time is 
now seven o’clock, seven of the evening, I 
think, not of the morning ; the houses of 
business in London are therefore closed. 
But why not send my man. Ham, with a 
letter by train to the private address of the 
person from whom you obtained the diary. 


106 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


telling him to hasten immediately to Sir 
Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to 
leave his side for a moment? Ham would 
reach this person before midnight, and un- 
derstanding that the matter was one of life 
and death, he would assuredly do your 
bidding.” 

As I was writing the note suggested by 
Zaleski, I turned and asked him : — 

From Avhom shall I say that the danger 
is to be expected, from the Indian ? ” 

From Ul-Jabal, yes ; but by no means 
Indian — Persian.” 

Profoundly impressed by this knowledge 
of detail derived from sources which had 
brought me no intelligence, I handed the 
note to the negro, telling him how to pro- 
ceed, and instructing him before starting 
from the station to search all the procur- 
able papers of the last iew days, and to re- 
turn in case he found in any of them a notice 
of the death of Sir Jocelin Saul. Then 
I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski. 
As I have told you,” he said, I am 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 107 

fully convinced that our messenger has 
gone on a bootless errand. I believe you 
will find that what has really occurred is 
this : either yesterday, or the day before, 
Sir Jocelin was found by his servant — I 
imagine he had a servant, though no men- 
tion is made of any — lying on the marble 
floor of his chamber, dead. Near him, 
probably by his side, will be found a gem, 
an oval stone, white in color, — the same, 
in fact, which Ul-Jabal last placed in the 
Edmundsbury chalice. There will be no 
marks of violence, no trace of poison ; the 
death will be found to be a perfectly nat- 
ural one. Yet, in this case, a particularly 
wicked murder has been committed. There 
are, I assure you, to my positive knowledge, 
forty-three — and in one island in the South 
Seas, forty-four — different methods of do- 
ing murder, any one of which would be 
entirely beyond the scope of the introspec- 
tive agencies at the ordinary disposal of 
society. 

But let us bend our minds to the de- 


108 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


tails of this matter. Let us ask first, who 
is this Ul-Jabal ? I have said that he is a 
Persian, and of this there is abundant evi- 
dence in the narrative other than his mere 
name. Fragmentary as the document is, 
and not intended by the writer to afford 
the information, there is yet evidence of 
the religion of this man, of tlie particular 
sect of that religion to which he belonged, 
of his peculiar shade of color, of the object 
of his stay at the Manor-house of Saul, of 
the special tribe amongst whom he for- 
merly lived. ^ What,’ he asks, when his 
greedy eyes first light on the long-desired 
gem, ^ what is the meaning of the inscrip- 
tion Has,” ’ — the meaning which he so 
well knew. ‘ One of the lost secrets of 
the world,’ replies the baronet. But I can 
hardly understand a learned Orientalist 
speaking in that way about what appears 
to me a very patent circumstance. It is 
clear that he never earnestly applied him- 
self to the solution of the riddle, or else — 
what is more likely^ in spite of his rather 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 109 

high-flown estimate of his own ^.Reason ’ — 
that his mind, and the mind of his ances- 
tors, never was able to go farther back in 
time than the Edmundsbury Monks. But 
they did not make the stone, nor did they dig 
it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk ; 
they got it from some one, and it is not 
difficult to say with certainty from whom. 
The stone, then, might have been engraved 
by that some one, or by the some one from 
whom he received it, and so on back into 
the dimnesses of time. And consider the 
character of the engraving : it consists of a 
mythological animal and some words, of which 
the letters ^ Has ’ only are distinguishable. 
But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. 
The Persians, you know, were not only 
quite worthy competitors with the Hebrews, 
the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for 
excellence in the glyptic art, but this fact 
is remarkable, that in much the same way 
that the figure of the scarabceus on an in- 
taglio or cameo is a pretty infallible indi- 
cation of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a 


110 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


priest or a grotesque animal a sure indica- 
tion of a Persian. We may say, then, 
from that evidence alone - — tliough there is 
more — that this gem was certainly Per- 
sian. And having reached that point, the 
mystery of ^ Has ’ vanishes ; for we at once 
jump at the conclusion that that too is 
Persian. But Persian, you say, written in 
English characters? Yes, and it was pre- 
cisely this fact that made its meaning one 
of what the baronet childishly calls ‘ the 
lost secrets of the world ; ’ for every suc- 
cessive inquirer, believing it part of an 
English phrase, was thus hopelessly led 
astray in his investigation. ‘ Has ’ is, in 
fact, part of the word ‘ Hasn-us-Sabah,’ and 
the mere circumstance that some of it has 
been obliterated, while the figure of the 
mystic animal remains intact, shows that it 
was executed by one of a nation less skilled 
in the art of graving in precious stones 
than the Persians, — by a rude, mediaeval 
Englishman, in short, — the modern revival 
of the art owing its origin, of course, to the 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. Ill 

Medici of a later age. And of this Eng- 
lishman, who either graved the stone him- 
self, or got some one else to do it for him, 
do we know nothing? We know, at least, 
that he was certainly a fighter, probably a 
Norman baron, that on his arm he bore 
the cross of red, that he trod the sacred soil 
of Palestine. Perhaps, to prove this, I 
need hardly remind you who Hasn-us-Sabah 
was. It is enough if I say that he was 
greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Cru- 
saders, lending his irresistible arms now to 
this side, now to that. He was the chief 
of the heterodox Mohammedan sect of the 
Assassins (this word, I believe, is actually 
derived from his name), imagined himself 
to be an incarnation of the Deity, and from 
his inaccessible rock-fortress of Alamut in 
the Elburz, exercised a sinister influence 
on the intricate politics of the day. The 
Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul- 
Jabal, — the Old Man of the Mountains, 
that very nickname connecting him infalli- 
bly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times. 


112 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


Now, three well-known facts occur to me 
in connection with this stone of the House 
of Saul, — the first, that Saladin met in 
battle, and defeated, and plundered^ in a cer- 
tain place, on a certain day, this Hasn-us 
Sabah, or one of his successors bearing the 
same name ; the second, that about this 
time there was a cordial rapprochement be- 
tween Saladin and Eichard the Lion, and 
between the Infidels and the Christians gen- 
erally, during which a free interchange of 
gems, then regarded as of deep mystic im- 
portance, took place, — remember ^ The 
Talisman,’ and the ^ Lee Penny ; ’ the third, 
that soon after the fighters of Richard, and 
then himself, returned to England, the 
loculus or coffin of St. Edmund (as we are 
informed by the ^ Jocelini Chronica ’) was 
opened hy the Ahhot at midnight, and the 
body of the martyr exposed. On such 
occasions it was customary to place gems 
and relics in the coffin, when it was again 
closed up. Now, the chalice with the stone 
was taken from this loculus ; and is it pos- 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 113 

sible not to believe that some knight to 
whom it had been presented by one of 
Saladin’s men, had in turn presented it to 
the monastery, first scratching uncouthly 
on its surface the name of Hasn to mark its 
semi-sacred origin, or perhaps bidding the 
monks to do so ? But the Assassins, now 
called, I think, ‘ al Hasani ’ or Ismaili,’ — 
^ that accursed Ishmaelite,^ the baronet ex- 
claims in one place, — still live, are still a 
flourishing sect impelled by fervid religious 
fanaticisms. And where, think you, is 
their chief place of settlement? Where, 
but on the heights of that same ^ Lebanon ^ 
on which Sir Jocelin ^picked up’ his too 
doubtful scribe and literary helper ? 

It now becomes evident that Ul-Jabal 
was one of the sect of the Assassins, and 
that the object of his sojourn at the manor- 
house, of his financial help to the baronet, 
of his whole journey perhaps to England, 
w^as the recovery of the sacred gem which 
once glittered on the breast of the founder 
of his sect. In dread of spoiling all by 
8 


114 


PKINCE ZALESKI. 


over-rashness, he waits, perhaps for years, 
till he makes sure that the stone is the 
right one by seeing it with his own eyes, 
and learns the secret of the spring by 
which the chalice is opened. He then 
proceeds to steal it. So far all is clear 
enough. Now, this too is conceivable, 
that, intending to commit the theft, he 
had beforehand provided himself with 
another stone similar in size and shape — 
these being well-known to him — to the 
other, in order to substitute it for the real 
stone, and so, for a time at least, escape 
detection. It is presumable that the chal- 
ice was not often opened by the baronet, and 
this would therefore have been a perfectly 
rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. 
But assuming this to be his mode of think- 
ing, how ludicrously absurd appears all the 
trouble he took to engrave the false stone 
in an exactly similar manner to the other. 
That could not help him in producing the 
deception, for that he did not contemplate 
the stone being iieen^ but only heard in the 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 115 

cup, is proved by the fact that he selected 
a stone of a different color. This color, 
as I shall afterwards show you, was that 
of a pale, brown-spotted stone. But we 
are met with something more extra- 
ordinary still when we come to the last 
stone, the white one — I shall prove that 
it was white — which Ul-Jabal placed in 
the cup. Is it possible that he had provided 
two substitutes, and that he had engraved 
these tivo^ without object, in the same 
minutely careful manner ? Your mind 
refuses to conceive it; and having done this, 
declines, in addition, to believe that he had 
prepared even one substitute ; and I am 
fully in accord with you in this conclusion. 

‘‘We may say then that Ul-Jabal had 
not prepared any substitute ; and it may 
be added that it was a thing altogether 
beyond the limits of the probable that he 
could hy chance have possessed two old 
gems exactly similar in every detail down 
to the very half-obliterated letters of the 
word ‘ Hasn-us-Sabah.’ I have now shown. 


116 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


you perceive, that he did not make them 
purposely, and that he did not possess them 
accidentally. Nor were they the baronet’s, 
for we have his declaration that he had 
never seen them before. Whence then did 
the Persian obtain them ? That point will 
immediately emerge into clearness, when 
we have sounded his motive for replacing 
the one false stone by the other, and, 
above all, for taking away the valueless 
stone, and then replacing it. And in order 
to lead you up to the comprehension of this 
motive, I begin by making the bold asser- 
tion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession 
the real St. Edmundsbury stone at all. 

You are surprised ; for you argue that 
if we are to take the baronet’s evidence at 
all, we must take it in this particular also, 
and he positively asserts that he saw* the 
Persian take the stone. It is true that 
there are indubitable signs of insanity in 
the document, but it is the insanity of a 
diseased mind manifesting itself by fan- 
tastic exaggeration of sentiment, rather 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 117 

than of a mind confiding to itself its own 
delusions as to matters of fact. There is 
therefore nothing so certain as that Ul- 
Jabal did steal the gem ; but these two 
things are equally evident : that by some 
means or other it very soon passed out of 
his possession, and that when it had so 
passed he, for his part, believed it to be in 
the possession of the baronet. ^Now,’ he 
cries in triumph, one day as he catches Sir 
Jocelin in his room, — ^notvyow have deliv- 
ered all into my hands.’ ^All’ what. Sir 
Jocelin wonders. ^ All,’ of course, meant 
the stone. He believes that the baronet 
has done precisely what the baronet after- 
wards believes that he has done, — hidden 
away the stone in the most secret of all 
places, in his own apartment, to wit. The 
Persian, sure now at last of victory, accord- 
ingly hastens into his chamber, and ^ locks 
the door,’ in order, by an easy search, to 
secure his prize. When, moreover, the 
baronet is examining the house at night 
with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal is 


118 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


spying his movements; when he extends 
his operations to the park, the other finds 
pretexts to be near him. Ul-Jabal dogs 
his footsteps like a shadow. But sup- 
posing he had really had the jewel, and 
had deposited it in a place of perfect safety, 
— such as, with or without lenses, the 
extensive grounds of the manor-house 
would certainly have afforded, — his more 
reasonable role would have been that of 
unconscious nonchalance^ rather than of 
agonized interest. But, in fact, he sup- 
posed the owner of the stone to be himself 
seeking a secure hiding-place for it, and 
is resolved at all costs on knowing the 
secret. And again in the vaults beneath 
the house Sir Jocelin reports that Ul-Jabal 
^ holds the lantern near the ground, with 
his head bent down : ’ can anything be 
better descriptive of the attitude of search ? 
Yet each is so sure that the other possesses 
the gem, that neither is able to suspect 
that both are seekers. 

But, after all, there is far better evi- 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 119 

dence of the non-possession of the stone by 
the Persian than all this, — and that is the 
murder of the baronet, for I can almost 
promise you that our messenger will return 
in a few minutes. Now, it seems to me 
that Ul-Jabal was not really murderous, 
averse rather to murder; thus the baronet 
is often in his power, swoons in his arms, 
lies under the influence of narcotics in 
semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, 
and yet no injury is done him. Still, when 
the clear necessity to murder, the clear 
means of gaining the stone, presents itself 
to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a moment, 
— indeed, he has already made elaborate 
preparations for that very necessity. And 
when was it that this necessity presented 
itself ? It was when the baronet put the 
false stone in the pocket of a loose gown 
for the purpose of confronting the Persian 
with it. But what kind of pocket? I 
think you will agree with me, that male 
garments, admitting of the designation 
‘ gown,’ have usually only outer pockets, — 


120 


PEINCE ZALESKI. 


large, square pockets simply sewed on to 
the outside of the robe. But a stone of 
that size must have made such a pocket 
bulge outwards. Ul-Jabal must have no- 
ticed it. Never before has he been per- 
fectly sure that the baronet carried the 
long-desired gem about on his body; but 
now at last he knows beyond all doubt. 
To obtain it, there are several courses 
open to him ; he may rush there and then 
on the weak old man and tear the stone 
from him ; he may ply him with narcotics, 
and extract it from the pocket during 
sleep. But in these there is a small chance 
of failure ; there is a certainty of near or 
ultimate detection, pursuit, — and this is a 
land of law, swift and fairly sure. No, the 
old man must die ; only thus — thus surely, 
and thus secretly, can the outraged dignity 
of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased. On the 
very next day he leaves the house ; no 
more shall the mistrustful baronet, who is 
^ hiding something from him,’ see his face. 
He carries with him a small parcel. Let 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 121 

me tell you what was in that parcel ; it 
contained the baronet’s fur cap, one of his 
^ brown gowns,’ and a snow-white beard 
and wig. Of the cap we can be sure, for 
from the fact that, on leaving his room at 
midnight to follow the Persian through the 
house^ he put it on his head, I gather that 
he wore it habitually during all his waking 
hours ; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him, he 
wanders far and wide ^ with uncovered 
head.’ Can you not picture the distracted 
old man seeking ever and anon with absent 
mind for his long-accustomed head-gear, 
and seeking in vain ? Of the gown, too, 
we may be equally certain ; for it w^as the 
procuring of this that led Ul-Jabal to the 
baronet’s trunk : we now know that he did 
not go there to hide the stone, for he had 
it not to hide; nor to seek it, for he w^ould 
be unable to believe the baronet childish 
enough to deposit it in so obvious a place. 
As for the wig and beard, they had been 
previously seen in his room. But before 
he leaves the house, Ul-Jabal has one more 


122 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


work to do : once more the two eat and 
drink together as in ^ the old dajs of 
love ; ’ once more the baronet is drunken 
with a deep sleep, and when he wakes, his 
skin is ^ brown as the leaves of autumn.’ 
That is the evidence of which I spake in 
the beginning, as giving us a hint of the 
exact shade of the Oriental’s color — it was 
tlie yellowish-brown of a seared leaf. And 
now that the face of the baronet has been 
smeared with this indelible pigment, all is 
ready for the tragedy, and Ul-Jabal de- 
parts. He will return, but not immedi- 
ately, for he will at least give the eyes of 
his victim time to grow accustomed to the 
change of color in his face ; nor will he 
tarry long, for there is no telling whether, 
or whither, the stone may not disappear 
from that outer pocket. I therefore sur- 
mise that the tragedy took place a day or 
two ago. I remembered the feebleness 
of the old man, his highly neurotic condi- 
tion; I thought of those ‘fibrillary twitch- 
ings/ indicating the onset of a well-known 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 123 

nervous disorder sure to end in sudden 
death ; I recalled his belief that on account 
of the loss of the stone, in which he felt his 
life bound up, the chariot of death was 
urgent on his footsteps ; I bore in mind his 
memory of his grandfather dying in agony 
just seventy years ago, after seeing his 
own wraith by the churchyard wall ; I knew 
that such a man could not be struck by the 
sudden, the terrific shock of seeing himself 
sitting in the chair before the mirror (the 
chair, you remember, had been placed there 
by Ul-Jabal) without dropping down stone 
dead on the spot. I was thus able to pre- 
dict the manner and place of the baronet’s 
death, — if he he dead. Beside him, I said, 
would probably be found a white stone. 
For Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation 
ended, would hurry to the pocket, snatch 
out the stone, and finding it not the stone 
he sought, would, in all likelihood, dash it 
down, fly away from the corpse as if from 
plague, and, I hope, straightway go and — 
hang himself.” 


124 PRINCE ZALESKI. 

It was at this point that the hlack mask 
of Ham framed itself between python-skin 
tapestries of the door-way. I tore from 
him the paper, now two days old, which 
he held in his hand, and under the head- 
ing Sudden Death of a Baronet,” read a 
nearly exact account of the facts which 
Zaleski had been detailing to me. 

I can see by your face that I was not 
altogether at fault,” he said, with one of 
his musical laughs ; but there still 
remains for us to discover whence Ul-Jabal 
obtained his two substitutes, his motive 
for exchanging one for the other, and for 
stealing the valueless gem ; but, above all, 
we must find where the real stone was all 
the time that these two men so sedulously 
sought it, and where it now is. Now, let 
us turn our attention to this stone, and 
ask, first, what light does the inscription on 
the cup throw on its nature ? The inscrip- 
tion assures us that if this stone be stolen,’, 
or if it ^ chaunges dre,’ the House of Saul 
and its head ^ anoon ’ [i. e. anon, at once) 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 125 

shall die. ^ Dre,’ I may remind you, is an 
old English word, used, I think, by Burns, 
identical with the Saxon ^ dreogan^ meaning 
to ^ suffer/ So that the writer at least 
contemplated that the stone might ^ suffer 
changes.’ But what kind of changes — 
external or internal ? External change — 
change of environment — is already pro- 
vided for when he says, ^ shulde this Ston 
stalen bee ; ’ ^ chaunges,’ therefore, in his 
mind, meant internal changes. But is 
such a thing possible for any precious stone, 
and for this one in particular ? As to that 
we might answer when we know the name 
of this one. It nowhere appears in the 
manuscript, and yet it is immediately dis- 
coverable. For it was a ^ sky-blue ’ stone ; 
a sky-blue, sacred stone ; a sky-blue, sacred, 
Persian stone. That at once gives us its 
name, — it was a turquoise. But can the 
turquoise, to the certain knowledge of a 
mediaeval writer, ^ chaunges dre ’ ? Let us 
turn for light to old Anselm de Boot : that 
is he in pig-skin on the shelf behind the 
bronze Hera.” . 


126 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


I handed the volume to Zaleski. He 
pointed to a passage which read as 
follows : — 

Assuredly the turquoise doth possess a 
soul more intelligent than that of man. 
But we cannot be wholly sure of the pres- 
ence of Angels in precious stones. I do 
rather opine that the evil spirit doth take 
up his abode therein, transforming himself 
into an angel of light, to the end that we 
put our trust not in God, but in the pre- 
cious stone ; and thus, perhaps, doth he 
deceive our spirits by the turquoise : for 
the turquoise is of two sorts, those which 
keep their color, and those which lose it.’' ^ 


^ “ Assurement la turquoise a une ame plus intelligente 
que I’ame de I’liomme. Mais nous ne pouvons rien estab- 
lir de certain touchant la presence des Anges dans les 
pierres precieuses. Mon jugement seroit plustot que 
le mauvais esprit, qui se transforme en Ange de lumiere se 
loge dans les pierres precieuses, a fin que I’on ne recoure 
pas a Dieu, mais que Ton repose sa creance dans la pierre 
precieuse ; ainsi, peut-etre, il dc9oit nos esprits par la tur- 
quoise : car la turquoise est de deux sortes, les unes qui 
conservent leur couleur et les autres qui la perdent.” — 
Anselm de Boot, Book II. 


THE EDMUNDSBUKY MONKS. 127 

^^You thus see,” resumed Zaleski, ^Hhat 
the turquoise was believed to have the 
property of changing its color, — a change 
which was universally supposed to indicate 
the fading away and death of its owner. 
The good De Boot, alas, believed this to be 
a property of too many other stones beside, 
like the Hebrews in respect of their urim 
and thummiin ; but in the case of the tur- 
quoise, at least, it is a well-authenticated nat- 
ural phenomenon, and I have myself seen 
such a specimen. In some cases the change 
is a gradual process ; in others it may occur 
suddenly within an hour, especially when 
the gem, long kept in the dark, is exposed 
to brilliant sunshine. I should say, however, 
that in this metamorphosis there is always 
an intermediate stage : the stone first 
changes from blue to a pale color spotted 
with brown, and, lastly, to a pure white. 
Thus, Ul-Jabal having stolen the stone, 
finds that it is of the wrong color, and soon 
after replaces it ; he supposes that in the 
darkness he has selected the wrong chalice. 


128 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


and so takes the valueless stone from the 
other. This too he replaces, and, infinitely 
puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial 
of the Edmundsbury chalice, and, again 
baffled, again replaces it, concluding now 
that the baronet has suspected his designs, 
and substituted a false stone for the real 
one. But after this last replacement, the 
stone assumes its final hue of white, and 
thus the baronet is led to think that two 
stones have been substituted by Ul-Jabal 
for his own invaluable gem. All this while 
the gem was lying serenely in its place 
in the chalice. And thus it came to 
pass that in the Manor-house of Saul there 
arose a somewhat considerable Ado about 
Nothing.” 

For a moment Zaleski paused, then, 
turning round and laying his hand on the 
brown forehead of the mummy by his side, 
he said, — 

My friend here could tell you, an he 
would, a fine tale of the immensely impor- 
tant part which jewels in all ages have 


THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS. 129 

played in human history, human religions, 
institutions, ideas. He flourished some five 
centuries before the Messiah, was a Mem- 
phian priest of Amsu, and, as the hiero- 
glyphics on his coffin assure me, a prime 
favorite with one Queen Amyntas. Be- 
neath these mouldering swaddlings of the 
grave a great ruby still cherishes its blood- 
guilty secret on the fore-finger of his right 
hand. Most curious is it to reflect how in all 
lands, and at all times, precious minerals 
have been endowed by men with mystic vir- 
tues. * The Persians, for instance, believed 
that spinelle and the garnet were harbingers 
of joy. Have you read the ancient Bishop 
of Eennes on the subject ? Eeally, I almost 
think there must be some truth in all this. 
The instinct of universal man is rarely far 
at fault. Already you have a semi-comic 
^ gold-cure ' for alcoholism, and you have 
heard of the geophagism of certain African 
tribes. What if the scientist of the future 
be destined to discover that the diamond, 
and it alone, is a specific for cholera, that 


130 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


powdered rubellite cures fever, and the 
clirysoberyl gout ? It would be in exact 
conformity with what I have hitherto 
observed of a general trend towards a 
certain inborn perverseness and whimsi- 
cality in Nature.” 


Note. — As some proof of the fineness of intuition evi- 
denced by Zaleski, as distinct from his more conspicuous 
powers of reasoning, I may here state that some years after 
the occurrence of the tragedy I have recorded above, the 
skeleton of a man was discovered in the vaults of the Manor- 
house of Saul. I have not the least doubt that it was the 
skeleton of Ul-Jabal. The teeth were very prominent. 
A rotten rope was found loosely knotted round the verte- 
brae of his neck. 


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THE S. S. 


“ Woblgeborne, gesunde Kinder bringen viel mit. . . . 

“ Wenn die Katur verabscbeut, so spricbt sie es laut aus : 
das Gescbopf, das falscb lebt, wird friib zerstdrt. Unfrucbt- 
barkeit, kiimmerlicbes Dasein, friibzeitiges Zerfallen, das 
sind ibre Fliiche, die Kennzeicben ibrer Strenge. ” ^ 

Goethe. 

’'Apyos 8e dvBpoiv i)(rjpw6rj ovroo, wore ol SoCXot avroov 
eaxov Trdvra to. np^ypara, dp^ovres re Ka\ Buttovtcs, €S d 
ol tS>v dnoXopeucou naldes.^ — Herodotus. 

'"I ""O say that there are epidemics of 
^ suicide is to give expression to what 
is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. 

1 “ Well-made, bealtby children bring much into tbe 
world along with them. . 

“ When Kature abhors, she speaks it aloud : tbe creature 
that lives with a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitful- 
ness, painful existence, early destruction, these are her 
curses, the tokens of her displeasure.” 

2 “ And Argos was so depleted of Men (i. e. offer the 
hatile with Cleomenes) that the slaves usurped everything — 
ruling and disposing — until such time as the sons of the 
slain were grown up.” 


134 


PKINCE ZALESKI. 


And so far are they from being of rare 
occurrence, that it has even been affirmed 
that every sensational case of felo de se 
published in the newspapers is sure to be 
followed by some otliers more obscure ; 
their frequency, indeed, is out of all pro- 
portion with the e:r/ent of each particular 
outbreak. Sometimes, however, especially 
in villages and small townships, the wild- 
fire madness becomes an all-involving pas- 
sion, emulating in its fury the great plagues 
of history. Of such kind was the craze 
in Versailles in 1793, when about a quar- 
ter of the whole population perished by 
the scourge ; while that at the Hotel dcs 
Invalides in Paris was only a notable one of 
the many which have occurred during the 
present century. At such times it is as if 
the optic nerve of the mind throughout 
whole communities became distorted, till 
in the noiseless and black-robed Reaper it 
discerned an angel of very loveliness. As 
a brimming maiden, out-worn by her vir- 
ginity, yields half-fainting to the dear sick 


THE S. S. 


135 


stress of her desire — with just such faint- 
ings, wanton fires, does the soul, over-taxed 
by the continence of living, yield voluntary 
to the grave, and adulterously make of 
Death its paramour. 

When she sees a bank 

Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell 
Her servants, what a pretty place it were 
To bury lovers in ; and make her maids 
Pluck ^em, and strew her over like a corse.’’ ^ 

The mode spreads — then rushes into rage : 
to breathe is to be obsolete : to wear the 
shroud becomes comme ilfaiit, this cerecloth 
acquiring all the attractiveness and eclat of 
a wedding garment. The coffin is not too 
strait for lawless nuptial bed ; and the 
sweet clods of the valley will prove no 
barren bridegroom of a writhing progeny. 
There is, however, nothing specially mys- 
terious in the operation of a pestilence of 
this nature : it is as conceivable, if not yet 
as explicable, as the contagion of cholera, 
1 Beau. & FI. : The Maid’s Tragedy. 


136 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


mind being at least as sensitive to the touch 
of mind as body to that of body. 

It was during the ever-memorahle out- 
break of this obscure malady, in the year 
1875, that I ventured to break in on the 
calm of that deep Silence in which, as in 
a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had 
wrapped himself. I wrote, in fact, to ask 
him what he thought of the epidemic. His 
answer was in the laconic Avords addressed 
to the Master in the house of woe at 
Bethany : — 

Come and see.” 

To this, however, he added in postscript : 
but Avhat epidemic ? ” 

I had momentarily lost sight of the fact 
that Zaleski had so absolutely cut himself 
oif from the Avorld, that he was not in the 
least likely to know anything even of the 
appalling series of events to Avhich I had 
referred. And yet it is no exaggeration 
to say that those events had thrown the 
greater part of Europe into a state of 
consternation, and even confusion. In 


THE S. S. 


137 


London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, 
especially, the excitement was intense. 
On the Sunday preceding the writing of 
my note to Zaleski, I was present at a 
monster demonstration held in Hyde Park, 
in which the Government was held up on 
all hands to the popular derision and cen- 
sure, — for it will be remembered that to 
many minds the mysterious accompani- 
ments of some of the deaths daily occur- 
ring, conveyed a still darker significance 
than that implied in mere self-destruction, 
and seemed to point to a succession of 
purposeless and hideous murders. The 
demagogues, I must say, spoke with some 
wildness and incoherence. Many laid the 
blame at the door of the police, and urged 
that things would be different, were they 
but placed under municipal, instead of 
under imperial, control. A thousand pana- 
ceas were invented, a thousand aimless 
censures passed. But the people listened 
with vacant ear. Never have I seen the 
populace so agitated, and yet so subdued. 


138 


PKINCE ZALESKL 


as with the sense of some impending doom. 
The glittering eye betrayed the excite- 
ment, the pallor of the cheek the doubt, 
the haunting fear. None felt himself 
quite safe ; men recognized shuddering the 
grin of death in the air. To tingle with 
affright, and to know not why, — that is 
the transcendentalism of terror. The 
threat of the cannon’s mouth is trivial in 
its effect on the mind in comparison with 
the menace of a Shadow. It is the pesti- 
lence that walketh hj night that is intoler- 
able. As for myself, I confess to being 
pervaded with a nameless and numbing 
awe during all those weeks. And this 
feeling appeared to be general in the land. 
The journals had but one topic ; the party 
organs threw politics to the winds. I 
heard that on the Stock Exchange as in 
the Paris Bourse., business decreased to a 
minimum. In Parliament the work of law- 
threshing practically ceased, and the time 
of Ministers was nightly spent in answer- 
ing volumes of angry “ Questions,” and in 


THE S. S. 139 

facing motion after motion for the “ ad- 
journment ” of the House. 

It was in the midst of all this commotion 
that I received Prince Zaleski’s brief 
“ Come and see.’' I was flattered and 
pleased : flattered, because I suspected 
that to me alone of all men would such an 
invitation, coming from him, be addressed; 
and pleased, because many a time in the 
midst of the noisy city-street and the 
garish, dusty world, had the thought of 
that vast mansion, that dim and silent 
chamber, flooded my mind with a drowsy 
sense of the romantic, till, from very ex- 
cess of melancholy sweetness in the pic- 
ture, I was fain to close my eyes. I avow 
that that lonesome room, — gloomy in its 
lunar bath of soft perfumed light, shrouded 
in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy, 
narcotic-breathing draperies, pervaded by 
the mysterious Spirit of its brooding occu- 
pant, — grew more and more on my fan- 
tasy, till the remembrance had for me 
all the cool refreshment shed by a mid- 


140 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


summer-night’s dream in the dewy deeps 
of some Perrhaebian grove of cornel and 
lotos, and ruby stars of the asphodel. It 
was therefore in all haste that I set out to 
share for a time in the solitude of my friend. 

Zaleski’s reception of me was most cor- 
dial ; immediately on my entrance into 
his sanctum, he broke into a perfect tor- 
rent of wild, enthusiastic words, telling me, 
with a kind of rapture, that he was just 
then laboriously engaged in co-ordinating 
to one of the calculi certain new proper- 
ties he had discovered in the parabola, 
adding with infinite gusto his firm ” 
belief that the ancient Assyrians were 
acquainted with all our modern notions 
respecting the parabola itself, the projec- 
tion of bodies in general, and of the 
heavenly bodies in particular ; and must, 
moreover, from certain inferences of his 
own in connection with the Winged Circle, 
have been conversant with the fact that 
light is not an ether, but only the vibration 
of an ether. He then galloped on to sug- 


THE S. S. 


141 


gest that I should at once take part with 
him in his investigations, and commented 
on the timeliness of my visit, I, on my 
part, was anxious for his opinion on other 
and far weightier matters than the con- 
cerns of the Assyrians, and intimated as 
much to him. But for two days he was 
firm in his tacit refusal to listen to my 
story : and, concluding that he was disin- 
clined to undergo the agony of unrest 
with which he was always tormented by 
any mystery which momentarily baffled 
him, I was, of course, forced to hold my 
peace. On the third day, however, of his 
own accord he asked me to what epidemic 
I had referred. I then detailed to him 
some of the strange events which were 
agitating the mind of the outside world. 
From the very first he was interested : 
later on that interest grew into a passion, 
a greedy, soul-consuming quest after the 
truth, the intensity of which was such at 
last as to move me even to pity. 

I may as well here restate the facts as 


142 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


I communicated them to Zaleski. The 
concatenation of incidents, it will be re- 
membered, started with the extraordinary 
death of that eminent man of science. 
Professor Schleschinger, consulting laryn- 
gologist to the Charite Hospital in Berlin. 
The Professor, a man of great age, was on 
the point of contracting his third marriage 
with the beautiful and accomplished daugh- 
ter of the Herr Geheimrath Otto von 
Friedrich. The contemplated union, which 
was entirely one of those manages de conve- 
nance so common in good society, sprang 
out of the Professor’s ardent desire to leave 
behind him a direct heir to his very con- 
siderable wealth. By his first two mar- 
riages, indeed, he had had large families, 
and was at this very time surrounded by 
quite an army of little grandchildren, 
from whom (all his direct descendants 
being dead) he might have been content 
to select his heir ; hut the old German prej- 
udices in these matters are strong ; and 
he still hoped to be represented on his 


THE S. S. 


143 


decease by a son of his own. To this 
whim the charming Ottilie was marked 
by her parents as the victim. The wed- 
ding, however, had been postponed ow- 
ing to a slight illness of the veteran 
scientist, and just as he was on the point 
of final recovery from it death intervened 
to prevent altogether the execution of 
his design. Never did death of man create 
a profounder sensation ; never was death of 
man followed hy consequences more terrible. 
The Residenz of the scientist was a stately 
mansion near the University in the Unter 
den Linden boulevard, that is to say, in 
the most fashionable QuartiercA Berlin. His 
bedroom from a considerable height looked 
out on a small back garden, and in this 
room he had been engaged in conversation 
with his colleague and medical attendant. 
Dr. Johann Hofmeier, to a late hour of the 
night. During all this time he seemed 
cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various 
topics. In particular, he exhibited to his 
colleague a curious strip of what looked like 


144 PRINCE ZALESKI. 

ancient papyrus, on which were traced cer- 
tain grotesque and apparently meaningless 
figures. This, he said, he had found some 
days before on the bed of a poor woman 
in one of the horribly low quarters that 
surround Berlin, on whom he had had occa- 
sion to make a post-mortem examination. 
The woman had suffered from partial 
paralysis. She had a small young family, 
none of whom, however, could give any 
account of the slip, except one little girl, 
who declared that she had taken it from 
her mother’s mouth ’’ after death. The 
slip was soiled, and had a fragrant smell, 
as though it had been smeared with honey. 
The Professor added that all through his 
illness he had been employing himself by 
examining these figures. He was con- 
vinced, he said, that they contained some 
archaeological significance ; but in any case 
he ceased not to ask himself how came a slip 
of papyrus to be found in such a situation, 
— on the bed of a dead Berlinerin of the 
poorest class ? The story of its being 


THE S. S. 


145 


taken from the moidh of the woman was 
of course nnbelievahle. The whole inci- 
dent seemed to puzzle, while it amused 
him ; seemed to appeal to the instinct — 
so strong in him — to investigate, to 
probe. For days, he declared, he had been 
endeavoring, in vain, to make anything 
of the figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, exam- 
ined the slip, but inclined to believe that 
the figures, — rude and uncouth as they 
were, — were only such as might be drawn 
by any school-boy in an idle moment. 
They consisted merely of a man and a 
woman seated on a bench, with what looked 
like an ornamental border running round 
them. After a pleasant evening’s scientific 
gossip, Dr. Hofmeier, a little after mid- 
night took his departure from the bedside. 
An hour later, the servants were roused 
from sleep by one deep, raucous cry pro- 
ceeding from the Professor’s room. They 
hastened to his door ; it was locked on the 
inside ; all was still within. No answer 
coming to their calls, the door was broken 
10 


146 


PRINCE ZALESKL 


in. They found their master lying calm 
and dead on his bed. A window of the 
room was open, but there was nothing to 
show that any one had entered it. Dr. 
Hofmeier was sent for, and was soon on 
the scene. After examining the body, he 
failed to find anything to account for the 
sudden demise of his old friend and chief. 
One observation, however, had the effect 
of causing him to tingle with horror. On 
his entrance he had noticed, lying on the 
side of the bed, the piece of papyrus with 
which the Professor had been toying in 
the earlier part of the day, and had re- 
moved it. But as he was on the point of 
leaving the room, he happened to approach 
the corpse once more, and bending over it, 
noticed that the lips and teeth were slightly 
parted. Drawing open the now stiff- 
ened jaws, he found — to his amazement, 
to his stupefaction — that, neatly folded 
beneath the dead tongue, lay just such 
another piece of papyrus as that which he 
had removed from the bed. He drew it 


THE S. S. 


147 


out, — it was clammy. He put it to his 
nose, — it exhaled the fragrance of honey. 
He opened it, — it was covered by figures. 
He compared them with the figures on the 
other slip, — they were just so similar as 
two draughtsmen hastily copying from a 
common model would make them. The 
Doctor was unnerved ; he hurried home- 
ward, and immediately submitted the honey 
on the papyrus to a rigorous chemical 
analysis. He suspected poison, a subtle 
poison, as the means of a suicide, gro- 
tesquely, insanely accomplished. He found 
the fluid to be perfectly innocuous, — pure 
honey and nothing more. 

The next day Germany thrilled with the 
news that Professor Schleschinger had de- 
stroyed himself. For suicide, however, 
some of the papers substituted murder, 
though of neither was there an atom of 
actual proof. On the day following, three 
persons died by their own hands in Berlin, 
of whom two were young members of the 
medical profession; on the day following 


148 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


that, the number rose to nineteen, Ham- 
burg, Dresden, and Aachen joining in the 
frenzied death-dance ; within three weeks 
from the night on wdiich Professor Schle- 
schinger met his unaccountable end, eight 
thousand persons in Germany, France, arid 
Great Britain died in that startlingly 
sudden and secret manner which we call 
tragic,” many of them obviously by their 
own hands, many in what seemed the 
servility of a fatal imitativeness, with 
figured, honey-smeared slips of papyrus 
beneath their tongues. Even now — now, 
after years — I thrill intensely to recall 
the dread remembrance ; but to live 
through it, to breathe daily the mawkish 
miasmatic atmosphere, all vapid with the 
suffocating death, — ah, it was terror too 
deep, nausea too foul for mortal bearing. 
Novalis has somewhere hinted at the possi- 
bility (or the desirability) of a simultaneous 
suicide and voluntary return by the whole 
human family into the sweet bosom of our 
ancient Father. I half expected it was 


THE S. S. 


149 


coming, had come, then. It was as if the 
old, good, easy, meek-eyed man of science, 
dying, had left his effectual curse on all 
the world, and had thereby converted 
civilization into one omnivorous grave, 
one universal charnel-house. 

I spent several daj^s in reading out to 
Zaleski accounts of particular deaths as 
they had occurred. He seemed never to 
tire of listening, lying back for the most 
part on the silver-cushioned couch, and 
wearing an inscrutable mask. Sometimes 
he rose and paced the carpet with noise- 
less foot-fall, his steps increasing to the 
swaying, uneven velocity of an animal in 
confinement, as a passage here or there 
attracted him, and then subsiding into their 
slow regularity again. At any interrup- 
tion in the reading, he would instantly 
turn to me with a certain impatience, 
and implore me to proceed ; and when 
our stock of matter failed, he broke out 
into actual anger that T had not brought 
more with me. Henceforth the negro 


150 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


Ham^ using my trap, daily took a double 
journey, one before sunrise, and one at 
dusk, to the nearest townie t, from which 
he would return loaded with newspapers. 
AV'ith unimaginable eagerness did both 
Zaleski and I seize, morning after morn- 
ing, and evening after evening, on these 
budgets, to gloat for long hours over the 
ever-lengthening tale of death. As for 
him, sleep forsook him. He was a man 
of small reasonableness, scorning the lim- 
itations of human capacity ; his palate 
brooked no meat when his brain was 
headlong in the chase ; even the mild 
narcotics which were now his food and 
drink seemed to lose something of their 
power to mollify, to curb him. Often 
rising from slumber in what I took to be 
the dead of night, — though of day or 
night there could be small certainty in 
that dim dwelling, — I would peep into 
the domed chamber, and see him there 
under the livid-green light of the censer, 
the leaden smoke issuing from his lips, 


THE S. S. 


151 


his eyes fixed iinweariedly on a square 
piece of ebony which rested on the 
coffin of the mummy near him. On this 
ebony he had pasted side by side several 
woodcuts — snipped from the newspapers 
— of the figures traced on the pieces of 
papyrus found in the mouths of the dead. 
1 could see, as time passed, that he was 
concentrating all his powers on these fig- 
ures ; for the details of the deaths them- 
selves were all of a dreary sameness, 
offering few salient points for investiga- 
tion. In those cases where the suicide 
had left behind him clear evidence of the 
means by which he had committed the act, 
there was nothing to investigate ; the 
others — rich and poor alike, peer and 
peasant — trooped out by thousands on 
the far journey, without leaving the faint- 
est foot-print to mark the road by which 
they had gone. 

This was perhaps the reason that after 
a time Zaleski discarded the newspapers, 
leaving their perusal to me, and turned 


152 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


his attention exclusively to the ebon tablet. 
Knowing as I full well did the daring and 
success of his past spiritual adventures, — 
the subtlety, the imagination, the imperial 
grip of his intellect, — I did not at all 
doubt that his choice was wise and would 
in the end be justified. These woodcuts 
— now so notorious — were all exactly 
similar in design, though minutely differ- 
ing here and there in drawing. The 
following is a fac-simile of one of them 
taken by me at random. 



grief to me to see the turgid pallor that 


THE S. S. 


153 


gradually overspread the always ashen 
countenance of Zaleski ; I grew to consider 
the ravaging life that glared and blazed in 
his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to 
be canny. The mystery, I decided at last, — 
if mystery there were, — was too deep, too 
dark for him. Hence perhaps it was that 
I now absented myself more and more 
from him in the adjoining room in which 
I slept. There one day I sat, reading 
over the latest list of horrors, when I 
heard a loud cry from the vaulted chamber. 
I rushed to the door and beheld him stand- 
ing, gazing with wild eyes at the ebon 
tablet held straight out in front of him. 

By Heaven ! ” he cried, stamping 
savagely with his foot. By Heaven ! 
Then I certainly am a fool ! It is the staff 
of Phoebus in the hand of Hermes I ” 

I hastened to him. Tell me,” I said, 
have you discovered anything ? ” 

It is possible.” 

And has there really been foul play, — 
murder, — in any of these deaths ? ” 


154 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


Of that, at least, I was certain from the 
first.” 

Great God ! ” I exclaimed, coidd any 
son of man so convert himself into a fiend, 
a beast of the wilderness — ” 

You judge precisely in the manner of 
the multitude, ” he answered somewhat 
petulantly. Illegal murder is always a 
mistake, but not necessarily a crime. 
Eemember Corday. But in cases where 
the murder of one is really fiendish, why 
is it qualitatively less fiendish than the 
murder of many ? On the other hand, had 
Brutus slain a thousand Csesars, — each act 
involving an additional exhibition of the 
sublimest self-suppression, — he might well 
have taken rank as a saint in heaven.” 

Failing for the moment to see the drift 
or the connection of the argument, I con- 
tented myself with waiting events. For 
the rest of that day and the next Zaleski 
seemed to have dismissed the matter of 
the tragedies from his mind, and entered 
calmly on his former studies. He no longer 


THE S. S. 


155 


consulted the news, or examined the figures 
on the tablet. The papers, however, still 
arrived daily, and of these he soon after- 
wards laid several before me, pointing 
with a curious smile to a small para- 
graph in each. These all appeared in the 
advertisement columns, were worded alike, 
and read as follows : — 

“ A true son of Lycurgus, having news, desires 
to know the time and place of tlie next meet- 
ing of his Phyle. Address Zaleski, at R 

Abbey, in the county of M 

I gazed in mute alternation at the adver- 
tisement and at him. I may here stop to 
make mention of a very remarkable sen- 
sation which my association with him occa- 
sionally produced in me. I felt it with 
intense, with unpleasant, with irritating 
keenness at this moment. It was the sen- 
sation of being borne aloft, aloft, by a force 
external to myself, — such a sensation as 
might possibly tingle through an earth- 
worm when lifted into illimitable airy 


156 


PKINCE ZALESKI. 


heights by the strongly daring pinions of 
an eagle. It was the feeling of being 
hurried out beyond one’s depth, — caught 
and whiffed away by the all-compelling 
sweep of some rabid vigor into a new for- 
eign element. Something akin I have 
experienced in an express ” as it raged 
with me — winged, rocking, ecstatic, shrill- 
ing, a dragon, aha ! — round a too narrow 
curve. It was a sensation very far from 
agreeable. 

‘‘To that,” he said, pointing to the para- 
graph, “ we may, I think, shortly expect 
an answer. Let us only hope that when 
it comes it may be immediately intelligible.” 

We waited throughout the whole of that 
day and night, hiding our eagerness under 
the pretence of absorption in our books. If 
by chance I fell into an uneasy doze, I found 
him, on waking, ever watchful, and poring 
over the great tome before him. About 
the time, however, when, could we have 
seen it, the first gray of dawn must have 
been peeping over the land, his impatience 


THE S. S. 


157 


again became painful to witness. He rose 
and paced the room, muttering occasionally 
to himself. This only ceased when, hours 
later. Ham entered the room with an en- 
velope in his hand. Zaleski seized it, — tore 
it opeti, — ran his eye over the contents, — 
and dashed it to the ground with an oath. 

Curse it!” he groaned. “Ah, curse 
it 1 unintelligible — every syllable of it 1 ” 
I picked up the missive and examined 
it. It was a slip of papyrus covered 
with the design now so hideously familiar, 
except only that the two central figures 
were w^anting. At the bottom was writ- 
ten the date of the 15th of November, — 
it was then the morning of the 12th, — 
and the name “ Morris.” The whole there- 
fore presented the following appearance : 



158 


PRINCE ZALESKI, 


My eyes were now heavy with sleep, 
every sense half-dr iinken with the vapor- 
like atmosphere of the room, so that, 
having abandoned something of hope, I 
tottered willingly to my bed, and fell into 
a profound slumber which lasted till what 
must have been the time of the gathering 
in of the shades of night. I then rose. 
Missing Zaleski, I sought through all the 
chambers for him. He was nowhere to 
be seen. The negro informed me, with 
an affectionate and anxious tremor in the 
voice, that his master had left the rooms 
some hours before, but had said nothing 
to him. I ordered the man to descend 
and look into the sacristy of the small 
chapel wherein I had deposited my caleche, 
and in the field behind, where my horse 
should be. He returned with the news 
that both had disappeared. Zaleski, I 
then concluded, had undoubtedly departed 
on a journey. 

I was deeply touched by the demeanor 
of Ham as the hours went by. He wan- 


THE S. S. 


159 


dered stealthily about the rooms like a 
lost being. It was like matter sighing 
after, weeping over, spirit. Prince Zaleski 
had never before withdrawn himself from 
the surveillance of this sturdy watchman, 
and his disappearance now was like a 
convulsion in their little cosmos. Ham 
implored me repeatedly, if I could, to 
throw some light on the meaning of this 
catastrophe. But I too was in the dark. 
The Titanic frame of the Ethiopian trem- 
bled with emotion as in broken, childish 
words he told me that he felt instinctively 
the approach of some great danger to the 
person of his master. So a day passed 
away, and then another. On the next 
he roused me from sleep to hand me a 
letter which, on opening, I found to be 
from Zaleski. It was hastily scribbled in 
pencil, dated London,. November 14th,’' 
and ran thus : — 

“ For my body, — should I not return by Friday 
night, — you will no doubt be good enough to 
make search. Descend the river, keeping con- 


160 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


stantly to the left ; consult the papyrus ; and 
stop at the Descensus JEsopi. Seek diligently 
and you will find. For the rest, you know my 
fancy for cremation ; take me, if you will, to the 
crematorium of P^re-la-chaise. My whole for- 
tune I decree to Ham, the Lybian.” 

Ham was all for knowing the contents of 
this letter, but I refused to communicate a 
word of it. I was dazed, I was more than 
ever perplexed, I was appalled by the 
frenzy of Zaleski. Friday night ! It was 
then Thursday morning. And I was ex- 
pected to wait through the dreary inter- 
val uncertain, agonized, inactive ! I was 
offended with my friend ; his conduct bore 
the interpretation of mental distraction. 
The leaden hours passed all oppressively 
while I sought to appease the keenness of 
my unrest with the anodyne of drugged 
sleep. On the next morning, however, 
another letter — a rather massive one — 
reached me. The covering was directed 
in the writing of Zaleski, but on it he had 
scribbled the words : This need not be 


THE S. S. 


161 


opened unless I fail to reappear before 
Saturday.’' I therefore laid the packet 
aside unread. 

I waited all through Friday, resolved 
that at six o’clock, if nothing happened, 
I should make some sort of effort. But 
from six 1 remained, with eyes strained 
towards the doorway, until ten. I was so 
utterly at a loss, my ingenuity was so en- 
tirely baffled by the situation, that I could 
devise no course of action which did not 
immediately appear absurd. But at mid- 
night I sprang up, — no longer would I 
endure the carking suspense. I seized a 
taper, and passed through the doorway. 
I had not proceeded far, however, when 
my light was extinguished. Then I re- 
membered with a shudder that I should 
have to pass through the whole vast 
length of the building in order to gain 
an exit. It was an all but hopeless task 
in the profound darkness to tread my way 
through the labyrinth of halls and corri- 
dors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted 
11 


162 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


vaults, of purposeless angles and involu- 
tions ; but I proceeded with something of 
a blind obstinacy, groping my way with 
arms held out before me. In this manner 
I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter 
of an hour, when my lingers came into 
distinct momentarv contact with what felt 

c/ 

like cold and humid human flesh. I shrank 
back, unnerved as I already was, wuth a 
murmur of affright. 

Zaleski ? ” I w^hispered with bated 
breath. 

Intently as I strained my ears I could 
detect no reply. The hairs of my head, 
catching terror from my fancies, erected 
themselves. 

Again I advanced, and again I became 
aware of the sensation of contact. With a 
a quick movement I passed my hand 
upward and dowmward. 

It was indeed he. He was half-reclining, 
half-standing against a wall of the cham- 
ber ; that he was not dead I at once knew 
by his uneasy breathing. Indeed, w^hen. 


THE S. S. 


163 


having chafed his hands for some time, I 
tried to rouse him, he quickly recovered 
himself, and muttered : I fainted ; I 

want sleep, — only sleep.” I bore him 
back to the lighted room, assisted by Ham 
in the latter part of the journey. Ham’s 
ecstasies were infinite ; he had hardly 
hoped to see his master’s face again. 
His garments being wet and soiled, the 
negro divested 'him of them, and dressed 
him in a tightly fitting scarlet robe of 
Babylonish pattern, reaching to the feet, 
but leaving the lower neck and fore-arm 
bare, and girt round the stomach by a 
broad gold-orphreyed ceinture. With all the 
tenderness of a woman, the man stretched 
his master thus arrayed on the couch. 
Here he kept an Argus guard while 
Zaleski, in one deep, unbroken slumber 
of a night and a day, reposed before him. 
When at last the sleeper woke, in his eye 
— full of divine instinct — flitted the wonted 
falchion-flash of the whetted two-edged in- 
tellect; the secret, austere, self-conscious 


164 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


smile of triumph curved his lip ; not a 
trace of pain or fatigue remained. After a 
substantial meal on nuts, autumn fruits, 
and wine of Samos, he resumed his place 
on the couch ; and I sat by his side to hear 
the story of his wandering. He said : — 
We have, Shiel, had before us a very 
remarkable series of murders, and a very 
remarkable series of suicides. Were they 
in any way connected ? To this extent, 
1 think, — that the mysterious, the unpar- 
alleled nature of the murders gave rise to a 
morbid condition in the public mind, which 
in turn resulted in the epidemic of suicide. 
But though such an epidemic has its origin 
in the instinct of imitation so common in 
men, you must not suppose that the men- 
tal process is a conscious one. A person 
feels an impulse to go and do, and is not 
aware that at bottom it is only an impulse 
to go and do likewise. He would indeed 
repudiate such an assumption. Thus one 
man destroys himself, and another imi- 
tates him ; but whereas the former uses 


THE S. S. 


165 


a pistol, the latter uses a rope. It is rather 
absurd, therefore, to imagine that in any of 
those cases in which the slip of papyrus 
has been found in the mouth after death, 
the cause of death has been the slavish 
imitativeness of the suicidal mania, — for 
this, as I say, is never slavish. The papyrus, 
then, — quite apart from the unmistakable 
evidences of suicide invariably left by each 
self-destroyer, — affords us definite and 
certain means by which we can distinguish 
the two classes of deaths ; and we are thus 
able to divide the total number into two 
nearly equal halves. 

But you start, you are troubled, you 
never heard or read of murder such as 
this, the simultaneous murder of thousands 
over wide areas of the face of the globe ; 
here you feel is something outside your 
experience, deeper than your profoundest 
imaginings. To the question, ^by whom 
committed ? ^ and ^ with what motive ? ' 
your mind can conceive no possible 
answer. And yet the answ^er must be, 


166 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


^ by man, and for human motives/ — for 
the Angel of Death with flashing eye, and 
flaming sword, is himself long dead. And 
again we can say at once : by no one man, 
but by many, — a cohort, an army of men ; 
and again, by no common men, but by 
men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in 
resource, in strength and unity of pur- 
pose ; men laughing to scorn the flimsy 
prophjdactics of society, separated by an 
infinity of self-confidence and spiritual 
integrity from the ordinary, easily crushed 
criminal of our days. 

This much at least I was able to dis- 
cover from the first ; and immediately I 
set myself to the detection of motive by a 
careful study of each case. This too, in 
due time, became clear to me ; but to mo- 
' live, it may perhaps be more convenient 
to refer later on. What next engaged my 
attention was the figures on the papyrus, 
and devoutly did I hope that by their solu- 
tion I might be able to arrive at some more 
exact knowledge of the mystery. 


THE S. S. 


167 


The figures round the border first at- 
tracted me, and the mere reading of them 
gave me very little trouble. But I was 
convinced that behind their meaning thus 
read lay some deep esoteric significance ; 
and this, almost to the last, I w'as utterly 
unable to fathom. You perceive that 
these border figures consist of waved lines 



of two different lengths, drawings of snakes, 
triangles looking like the Greek delta, and 
a heart-shaped object with a dot following 
it. These succeed one another in a certain 
definite order on all the slips. What, I 
asked myself, were these drawings meant 
to represent, — letters, numbers, things, 
or abstractions ? This I was the more 
readily able to determine because I have 
often, in thinking over the shape of the 


168 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


Roman letter S, wondered whether it did 
not owe its convolute form to an attempt 
on the part of its inventor to make a 
picture of the serpent^ S being the sibilant 
or hissing letter, and the serpent the hiss- 
ing animal. This view, I fancj^ (though I 
am not sure), has escaped the philologists ; 
but, of course, you know that all letters 
were originally pictures of things^ and of 
W'hat was S a picture, if not of the ser- 



pent ? I therefore assumed, by way of 
trial, that the snakes in the diagram stood 
for a sibilant letter, that is either C or S. 
And thence, supposing this to be the case, 
I deduced, firstly, that all the other fig- 
ures stood for letters ; and secondly, that 
they all appeared in the form of pictures 
of the things of which those letters were 



THE S. S. 


169 


originally meant to be pictures. Thus the 
letter ^ m/ one of the four ^ liquid' conso- 
nants is, as we now write it, only a short- 
ened form of a waved line ; and as a waved 
line it was originally written, and was the 
character by which a dream of running water 
was represented in writing ; indeed it only 
owes it name to the fact that when the 
lips are pressed together, and ^ m ’ uttered 
by a continuous effort, a certain resem- 
blance to the murmur of running water is 
produced. The longer waved line in the dia- 



gram I therefore took to represent ^ m ’ ; and 
it at once followed that the shorter meant 
‘ n,’ for no two letters of the commoner 
European alphabets differ only in length 
(as distinct from shape) except ^m' and 
‘ n,' and ^ w ' and ‘ v ’ : indeed, just as the 


170 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


French call ^ w ’ ^ double-ve/ so very prop- 
erly might ^ in ’ be^ called ^ double-en.’ 
But, in this case, the longer not being ^ w,' 
the shorter could not be ^ v ' ; it was there- 
fore ^ n.’ And now there only remained the 
heart and the triangle. , I was unable to 
think of any letter that could ever have 
been intended for the picture of a heart, 
but the triangle I knew to be the letter A. 
This was originally written without the 
cross-bar from prop to prop, and the two 
feet at the bottom of the props w-ere not 
separated as now, but joined ; so that the 
letter formed a true triangle ; it was meant 
by the primitive man to be a picture of 
his primitive house, this house being, of 
course, hut-shaped, and consisting of a 
conical roof without walls. I had thus, 
with the exception of the heart, disentan- 
gled the wdiole, which then (leaving a 
space for the heart) read as follows : — 

( ss 


‘ mn 


anan . . . san.’ 


THE S. S. 


171 


But ^ c ’ before ^ a ' being never a 
sibilant (except in some few so-called 
^ Romance ’ languages), but a guttural, it 
was, for the moment discarded ; also as no 
word begins with the letters ^ mn ’ except 



^ mnemonics ’ and its fellows, T concluded 
that a vowel must be omitted between 
these letters, and thence that all vowels, 
(except ‘a’) were omitted; again as the 
double ‘ s ’ can never come after ^ n ’ I saw 
that either a vowel was omitted between 
the two ^ s ’s,’ or that the first word ended 
after the first ^ s.’ Thus I got — 

‘ m ns sanan . . . san,’ 
or, supplying the now quite obvious vowels, 
‘ mens sana in . . . sano,’ 

The heart I now knew represented the 


172 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


word ^ corpore,’ the Latin word for ^ heart ’ 
being ^ cor,’ and the dot — showing that 
the word as it stood was an abbreviation 
— conclusively proved every one of my 
deductions. 

“ So far all had gone flowingly. It was 
only when I came to consider the central 
figures that for many days I spent my 
strength in vain. You heard my exclama- 
tion of delight and astonishment when at 
last a ray of light pierced the gloom. At 
no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark 
as to the general significance of these fig- 
ures, for I saw at once their resemblance 
to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. 
In case you are not minutely acquainted 
with the technique of these stones, I may as 
well show you one, which I myself re- 
moved from an old grave in Tarentum.” 

He took from a niche a small piece of 
close-grained marble, about a foot square, 
and laid it before me. On one side it was 
exquisitely sculptured in relief. 

This,” he continued, is a typical 


THE S. S. 


173 


example of the Greek grave-stone, and 
having seen one specimen you may be 
said to have seen almost all, for there is 
surprisingly little variety in the class. 
You will observe that the scene represents 
a man reclining on a couch ; in his hand he 
holds a 'patera^ or dish, filled with grapes 
and pomegranates, and beside him is a 
tripod bearing the viands from which he is 
banqueting. At his feet sits a woman, — 
for the Greek lady never reclined at table. 
In addition to these two figures a horse’s 
head, a dog, or a serpent may sometimes 
be seen ; and these forms comprise the 
almost invariable pattern of all grave re- 
liefs. Now, that this w^as the real model 
from which the figures on the papyrus 
were taken I could not doubt, when T 
considered the seemingly absurd fidelity 
with which in each murder the papyrus, 
smeared with honey, was placed under the 
tongue of the victim. I said to myself : It 
can only be that the assassins have bound 
themselves to the observance of a strict 


174 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


and narrow ritual from which no departure 
is under any circumstances permitted — 
perhaps for the sake of signalling the 
course of events to others at a distance. 
But what ritual? That question I was 
able to answer when I knew the answer 
to these others, — why under the tongue, and 
why smeared with honey? For no reason, 
except that the Greeks (not the Romans 
till very late in their history) always 
placed an oholos, or penny, beneath the 
tongue of the dead to pay his passage 
across the Stygian river of ghosts ; for no 
reason, except that to these same Greeks 
honey was a sacred fluid, intimately asso- 
ciated in their minds with the mournful 
subject of Death; a fluid with which the 
bodies of the deceased were anointed, 
and sometimes — especially in Sparta and 
the Pelasgic South — embalmed ; with 
which libations were poured to Hermes 
Psychopompos, conductor of the dead to 
the regions of shade ; with which offerings 
were made to all the chthonic deities, and 


THE S. S. 


175 


the souls of the departed in general. You 
remember, for instance, the melancholy 
words of Helen addressed to Herrnione in 
Orestes : — 

Kal Xa^€ %oa9 rdaB iv y^epolv KOfia^ r €/jLd<;. 
iXdovaa B' top K\vTaifjLpijaTpa<; Td(f>op 

pbeXUpar '^d\aKTO<^ oIpcottop t d")(V'qv. 

And so everywhere. The ritual then of 
the murderers was a Greek ritual, their 
cult a Greek cult, — preferably, perhaps, 
a South Greek one, a Spartan one, for it 
was here that the highly conservative peo- 
jdes of that region clung longest and fond- 
liest to this semi-barbarous worship. This 
then being so, I was made all the more 
certain of my conjecture that the central 
figures on the papyrus were drawn from a 
Greek model. 

Here, however, I came to a stand- 
still. I was infinitely puzzled by the rod 
in the man’s hand. In none of the Greek 
grave-reliefs does any such thing as a rod 
make an appearance, except in one well- 
known example where the god Hermes — 


176 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


generally represented as carrying the ca- 
duceus, or staff, given him by Phoebus — 
appears leading a dead maiden to the land 
of night. But in every other example of 
which I am aware the sculpture repre- 
sents a man living, not dead, banqueting 
on earth, not in Hades, by the side of his 
living companion. What then could be 
the significance of the staff in the hand of 
this living man ? It was only after days 
of the hardest struggle, the cruelest sus- 
pense, that the thought flashed on me that 
the idea of Hermes leading away the dead 
female might, in this case, have been car- 
ried one step further ; that the male figure 
might be no living man, no man at all, 
but Hermes himself actually banqueting in 
Hades with the soul of his disembodied 
protegee ! The thought filled me with a 
rapture I cannot describe, and you wit- 
nessed my excitement. But, at all events, 
I saw that this was a truly tremendous 
departure from Greek art and thought, 
to which in general the copyists seemed 


THE S. S. 


177 


to cling so religiously. There must there- 
fore be a reason, a strong reason, for vanda- 
lism such as this. And that, at any rate, it 
was no longer difficult to discover ; for now 
I knew that the male figure was no mortal, 
but a god, a spirit, a d^mon (in the Greek 
sense of the word) ; and the female figure 
I saw by the marked shortness of her drap- 
ery to be no Athenian, but a Spartan ; no 
matron either, but a maiden, a lass, a 
LASSIE ; and now I had forced on me 
lassie daemon, Lacedcemon. 

This then, was the badge, the so 
carefully buried badge, of this society of 
men. The only thing which still puzzled 
and confounded me at this stage was the 
startling circumstance that a Greek society 
should make use of a Latin motto. It 
was clear that either all my conclusions 
were totally wrong, or else the motto mens 
Sana in corpore sano contained wrapped up 
in itself some acroamatic meaning wffiich I 
found myself unable to penetrate, and 
which the authors had found no Greek 
12 


178 


PrjNCE ZALESKI. 


motto capable of conveying. But at any 
rate, having found this much, my know- 
ledge led me of itself one step further ; 
for I perceived that, widely extended as 
were their operations, the society was nec- 
essarily in the main an English, or at least 
an English-speaking one, — for of this 
the word ^ lassie ’ was plainly indicative : 
it was easy now to conjecture London, the 
monster-city in which all things lose them- 
selves, as their head-quarters : and at this 
point in my investigations I despatched to 
the papers the advertisement you have 
seen.” 

^^But,” I exclaimed, even now I utterly 
fail to see by what mysterious processes of 
thought you arrived at the wording of the 
advertisement ; even now it conveys no 
meaning to my mind.” 

That,” he replied, will grow clear 
when we come to a right understanding 
of the baleful motive which inspired these 
men. I have already said that I was not 
long in discovering it. There was only 


THE S. S. 


179 


one possible method of doing so, — and that 
was, by all means, by any means, to find 
out some condition or other common to 
every one of the victims before death. It 
is true that I was unable to do this in some 
few cases, but where I failed, I was con- 
vinced that my fiiilure was due to the in- 
sufficiency of the evidence at my disposal, 
rather than to the actual absence of the 
condition. Now, let us take almost any 
two cases you will, and seek for this com- 
mon condition : let us take, for example, 
the first two that attracted the attention 
of the world, — the poor woman of the 
slums of Berlin, and the celebrated man 
of science. Separated by as wide an inter- 
val as they are, we shall yet find, if we look 
closely, in each case the same pathetic 
tokens of the still uneliminated drice of our 
poor humanity. The woman is not an old 
woman, for she has a ^ small young ’ family, 
which, had she lived, might have been in- 
creased : notwithstanding which, she has 
suffered from hemiplegia, ^ partial paraly- 


180 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


sis.* The Professor, too, has had not one, 
but two, large families, and an ^ army of 
grandchildren : * but note well the start- 
ling, the hideous fact, that every one of his 
children is dead! Tlie crude grave has 
gaped before the cock to suck in every one 
of those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital 
impulse, so pauper of civism, lust, so 
draughty, so vague, so lean — but not be- 
fore they have had time to dower with the 
ah and woe of their infirmity a whole 
wretched ‘army of grandchildren.’ And 
yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in 
his old age, of marrying once again, of pro- 
ducing for the good of his race still more 
of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid 
significance, the point of resemblance, — 
you see it? And, 0 heaven, is it no too 
sad ? For me, I tell you, the whole busi- 
ness has a tragic pitifulness too deep for 
w^ords. But this brings me to the discus- 
sion of a large matter. It would, for in- 
stance, be interesting to me to hear what 
you, a modern European, saturated with all 


THE S. S. 


181 


the notions of your little day, what you con- 
sider the supreme, the all-important question 
for the nations of Europe at this moment. 
Am I far wrong in assuming that you would 
rattle off half a dozen of the moot points 
agitating rival .factions in your own land, 
select one of them, and call that ^ the ques- 
tion of the hour ’ ? 1 wish 1 could see as 

you see; 1 wish to God 1 did not see 
deeper. In order to lead you to my point, 
what, let me ask you, what precisely was 
it that ruined the old nations — that 
brought, say Rome, to her knees at last ? 
Centralization, you say, top-heavy impe- 
rialism, dilettante pessimism, the love of 
luxury. At bottom, believe me, it was 
not one of these high-sounding things — it 
was simply War; the sum total of the 
battles of centuries. But let me^ explain 
myself : this is a novel view to you, and 
you are perhaps unable to conceive how or 
why war was so fatal to the old world, be- 
cause you see how little harmful it is to the 
new\ If you collected in a promiscuous way 


182 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


a few millions of modern Englishmen and 
slew them all simultaneously, what, think 
you, would be the effect from the point of 
view of the State ? The effect, I conceive, 
would be indefinitely small, wonderfully 
transitory, — there would, of course, be a 
momentary lacuna in the boiling surge ; 
yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, 
and uberant ; Ocean-tide, wooed of that 
Ilithyia whose breasts are many, would flow 
on, and the void would soon be filled. 
But the effect would only be thus insig- 
nificant, if, as I said, your millions were 
taken promiscuously (as in the modern 
army), not if they were picked men, — in 
that case tlie loss (or gain) would be exces- 
sive, and permanent for all time. Now, the 
war-hosts of the ancient commonwealths 
— not dependent on the mechanical con- 
trivances of the modern army — were 
necessarily composed of the very best men : 
the strong-boned, the heart-stout, the sound 
in wind and limb. Under these conditions 
the State shuddered through all her frame, 
thrilled a-down every filament, at the death 


THE S. S. 


183 


of a single one of her sons in the field. As 
only the feeble, the aged, bided at home, 
their number after each battle became 
larger in proportion to the whole than before. 
Thus the nation, more and more, with 
ever-increasing rapidity, declined in bod- 
ily, and of course spiritual, quality, until 
the end was reached, and Nature swallowed 
up the weaklings whole ; and thus war, 
which to the modern state is at worst the 
blockhead and indecent affaires d' honneur 
of persons in office — and which, surely, 
before you and I die will cease altogether 
— was to the ancient a genuine and re- 
morselessly fatal scourge. 

And now let me apply these facts to the 
Europe of our own time. We no longer 
have world-serious war — but in its place 
we have a scourge, the effect of which on 
the modern state is precisely/ the same as the 
effect of war on the ancient, only — in 
the end — far more destructive, far more 
subtle, sure, horrible, disgusting. The 
name of this pestilence is Medical Science. 


184 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


Yes, it is most true, shudder — shudder — 
as you will ! Man’s best friend turns to an 
asp in his bosom to sting him to the basest 
of deaths. The devastating growth of med- 
ical, and especially surgical, science, — that, 
if you like, for us all, is ‘ the question of 
the hour ! ’ And what a question ! Of 
what surpassing importance, in the pres- 
ence of which all other ^ questions ’ what- 
ever dwindle into mere academic triviality. 
For just as the ancient State was wounded 
to the heart through the death of her 
healthy sons in the field, just so slowly, just 
so silently, is the modern receiving deadly 
hurt by the botching and tinkering of her 
unhealthy children. The net result is in 
each case the same, — the altered ratio of 
the total amount of reproductive health to 
the total amount of reproductive disease. 
They recklessly spent their best ; we sedu- 
lously conserve our worst ; and as they 
pined and died of anaemia, so we, unless 
we repent, must perish in a paroxysm of 
black-blood apoplexy. And this prospect 


THE S. S. 


185 


becomes more certain, when you reflect 
that the physician as we know him is not 
like other men and things, — a being of 
gradual growth, of slow evolution : from 
Adam to the middle of the last century 
the world saw nothing even in the least 
resembling him. No son of Paian, he, but 
a fatherless, full-grown birth from the inces- 
sant matrix of Modern Time, so motherly 
of monstrous litters of ^ Gorgon and Hydra 
and Chimaeras dire;’ you will understand 
what I mean when you consider the quite 
recent date of, say, the introduction of 
anaesthetics or antiseptics, the discovery of 
the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of such 
a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. 
We are at this very time, if I mistake not, 
on the verge of new insights which will 
enable man to laugh at disease, — laugh 
at it in the sense of over-ruling its natural 
tendency to produce death, not by any 
means in the sense of destroying its ever- 
expanding existence. Do you know that at 
this moment your hospitals are crammed 


186 


PPJNCE ZALESKI. 


with beings in human likeness suffering 
from a thousand obscure and subtly-inerad- 
icable ills, all of whom, if left alone, wmuld 
die almost at once, but ninety in the 
hundred of wdioni wdll, as it is, be sent 
forth cured,” like missionaries of hell, and 
the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, 
to mingle in the pure river of humanity 
the poison- taint of their protean vileness ? 
Do you know that in your schools one 
quarter of the children are already pur- 
blind ? Have 3^ou gauged the importance 
of your tremendous consumption of quack 
catholicons, of the fortunes derived from 
their sale, of the spread of modern ner- 
vous disorders, of toothless youth and 
thrice loathsome age among the helot- 
classes ? Do you know that in the course 
of my late journey to London, I w^alked 
from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Paik 
Corner, during which time I observed 
some five hundred people, of wLom 
twenty-seven only were perfectly healthy, 
well-formed men, and eighteen healthy, 


THE S. S. 


187 


beautiful women ? On every hand — 
with a thrill of in tensest joy I say it ! — 
is to be seen, if not yet commencing civil- 
ization, then progress, progress, wide as 
the world, toward it ; only here — at the 
heart — is there decadence, fatty degener- 
ation. Brain-evolution, and favoring airs, 
and the ripening time, and the silent Will 
of God, of God — all these in conspiracy 
seem to be behind, urging the whole ship’s 
company of us to some undreamable luxury 
of glory, when lo ! this check, artificial, 
evitable. Less death, more disease, — that 
is the sad, the unnatural record ; children 
especially, — so sensitive to the physician’s 
art, — living on by hundreds of thousands, 
bearing within them the germs of wide- 
spreading sorrow, who in former times 
would have died. And if you consider that 
the proper function of the doctor is the 
strictly limited one of curing the curable, 
rather than of self-gloriously perpetuating 
the incurable, you may find it difficult to 
give a quite rational answer to this simple 


188 PRINCE ZALESKI. 

question : Why ? Nothing is so sure as 
that to the unit it is a cruelty ; nothing so 
certain as that to humanity it is a wrong ; 
to say that such and such an one was sent 
by the All Wise, and must therefore be not 
merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed 
and forced, to live, is to utter a blasphemy 
against Man at which even the ribald ' 
tongue of a priest might falter ; and as a 
matter of fact, society, in just contempt for 
this species of argument, never hesitates to 
hang, for its own imagined good, its heaven- 
sent catholics, protestants, sheep, sheep- 
stealers, etc. What, then, you ask, would 
I do with these unholy ones ? To save the 
State, would I pierce them with a sword, 
or leave them to the slow throes of their 
agonies ? Ah, do not expect me to answer 
that question, — I do not know what to 
answer. The ’whole spirit of the present 
is one of a broad and beautiful, if quite 
thoughtless, humanism, and I, a child of 
the present, cannot but be borne along 
by it, coerced into sympathy with it. 


THE S. S. 


189 


^ Beautiful ’ I say : for if anywhere in the 
world you have seen a sight more beauti- 
ful than a group of hospital savants bend- 
ing with endless scrupulousness over a 
little pauper child, concentring upon its 
frailty the whole human skill and wisdom 
of ages, so have not I. Here have you the 
full realization of a parable diviner than that 
of the man who went down from Jerusalem 
to Jericho. Beautiful then ; with at least 
surface beauty, like the serpent lachesis 
muta ; but, like many beautiful things, 
deadly too, f^^human. And, on the whole, 
an answer will have to he found. As for 
me, it is a doubt which has often agitated 
me, whether the central dogma of Judaism 
and Christianity alike can, after all, be 
really one of the inner verities of this our 
earthly being, — the dogma, that by the 
shedding of the innocent blood, and by that 
alone, shall the race of man find cleansing 
and salvation. Will no agony of reluc- 
tance overcome the necessity that one man 
die, so that the whole people perish not ? ” 


190 


PKINCE ZALESKl. 


Can it be true that by nothing less than 
the ^ three days of pestilence ’ shall the 
land be purged of its stain, and is this 
old divine alternative about to confront 
us in new, modern form? Does the inscru- 
table Artemis indeed demand offerings 
of human blood to suage her anger? Most, 
sad that man should ever need, should ever 
have needed, to foul his hand in the /xvcra- 
pov alpa. of his own veins 1 But what is, 
is. And can it be fated that the most 
advanced civilization of the future shall 
needs have in it, as the first and chief 
element of its glory, the most barbarous 
of all the rituals of barbarism — the im- 
molation of hecatombs which wail a muling 
human wail ? Is it indeed part of man’s 
strange destiny through the deeps of Time 
that he one day bow his back to the duty 
of pruning himself as a garden, so that he 
run not to a waste wilderness ? Shall the 
physician, the accoucheur of the time to 
come be expected, and commanded, to do 
on the ephod and breastplate, anoint his 


THE S. S. 


191 


head with the oil of gladness, and add to 
'the function of healer the function of 
Sacrificial Priest ? These you say, are 
wild, dark questions. Wild enough, dark 
enough. We know how Sparta — the 
^man-taming Sparta,’ Simonides calls her 
— answered them. Here was the com- 
[ plete subordination of all unit-life to the 
[well-being of the Whole. The child, im- 
mediately on his entry into the w^orld, 
fell under the control of the State : it was 
not left to the judgment of his parents, as 
elsewhere, whether he should be brought 
up or not, but a commission of the Phyle 
in which he was born decided the question. 
If he was weakly, if he had any bodily 
unsightliness, he was exposed on a place 
called Taygetus, and so perished. It was 
a consequence of this that never did the 
sun in his course light on man half so 
godly, stalwart, on woman half so houri- 
lovely as in stern and stout old Sparta. 
Death, like all mortal, they must bear ; 
disease, once and for all, they were 


192 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


resolved to have done with. The word 
which they used to express the idea 
‘ugly/ meant also ‘hateful/ ‘vile/ ‘dis- 
graceful/ — and I need hardly point out 
to you the significance of that fact alone ; 
for they considered — and rightly — that 
there is no sort of natural reason why 
every denizen of earth should not be 
perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful, — 
if only very moderate pains be taken to 
procure this divine result. One fellow, 
indeed, called Nancleidas, grew a little 
too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the 
Spartans : I believe he was periodically 
whipped. Under a system so very bar- 
barous, the super-sweet egoistic voice of 
the club-footed poet Byron would, of 
course, never have been heard : one brief 
egoistic ‘ lament ’ on Taygetus, and so an 
end. It is not, however, certain that the 
world could not have managed very well 
without Lord Byron. The one thing that 
admits of no contradiction is that it can- 
not manage without the holy citizen, and 


THE S. S. 


193 


that disease, to men and to nations, can 
have but one meaning, annihilation near 
or ultimate. At any rate, from these re- 
marks you will now very likely be able 
to arrive at some understanding of the 
wording of the advertisements which I sent 
to the papers.” 

Zaleski, having delivered himself of this 
singular tirade, paused ; replaced the se- 
pulchral relief in its niche, drew a drapery 
of silver cloth over his bare feet and the 
hem of his antique garment of Babylon, 

and then continued : — 

# 

After some time the answer to the 
advertisement at length arrived ; but what 
was my disgust to find that it was perfectly 
unintelligible to me. I had asked for a 
date and an address : the reply came giv- 
ing a date, and an address, too, — but an 
address wrapped up in cypher, which, of 
course, I, as a supposed member of the soci- 
ety, was expected to be able to read. At 
any rate, I now knew the significance of the 
incongruous circumstance that the Latin 
13 


194 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


proverb, mens sana, etc., should be adopted 
as the motto of a Greek society ; the sig- 
nificance lay in this, that the' motto con- 
tained an address, — the address of their 
meeting-place, or at least of their chief 
meeting-place. I was now confronted wdth 
the task of solving — and of solving quicklj^, 
without the loss of an hour — this enigma; 
and I confess tliat it was onlj^ by the most 
violent and extraordinary concentration of 
what I may call the dissecting faculty, that 
I was able to do so in good time. And 
yet there was no special difficulty in the 
matter. For looking at the motto as it 
stood in cypher, the first thing I perceived 
was that, in order to read the secret, the 
heart-shaped figure must be left out of 
consideration, if there was any consistency 
in the system of cyphers at all, for it be- 
longed to a class of symbols quite distinct 
from that of all the others, not being, like 
them, a picture-letter. Omitting this, there- 
fore, and taking all the other vowels and 
consonants, whether actually represented 


THE S. S. 


195 


in the device or not, I now got the proverb 
in the form mens sana in . . . pore sano. 
I wrote this down ; and what instantly 
struck me was the immense, the altogether 
unusual, number of liquids in the motto, — 
six in all, amounting to no less than one 
third of the total number of letters! Put- 
ting these all together you get mnnnnr, 
and you can see that the very appearance 
of the ‘ m's ’ and ^ n’s ’ (especially when 
loritten), running into one another, of it- 
self suggests a stream of water. Having 
previously arrived at the conclusion of Lon- 
don as the meeting-place, I could not now 
fail to go on to the inference of the Thames ; 
there, or near there, would I find those 
whom I sought. The letters ‘ mnnnnr/ 
then, meant the Thames. What did the 
still remaining letters mean ? I now took 
these remaining letters, placing them side 
by side : 1 got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p, and i. 
Juxtaposing these nearly in the order indi- 
cated by the frequency of their occurrence, 
and their place in the Roman alphabet. 


196 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


you at once and inevitably get the word 
uEsopi. And now I was fairly startled 
by this symmetrical proof of the exactness 
of my own deductions in other respects, 
but above all, far above all, by the occur- 
rence of that word, For who 

was ^sopus? He was a slave who was 
freed for his wise and witful sallies : he 
is therefore typical of the liberty of the 
wise, — their moral manumission from tem- 
porary and narrow law. He was also a 
close friend of Croesus : he is typical, then, 
of the union of wisdom with wealth, — 
true wisdom with real wealth. Lastly, 
and above all, he was thrown by the 
Delphians from a rock on account of his 
wit: he is typical therefore of death, — 
the shedding of blood, — as a result of 
wisdom ; this thought being an elaboration 
of Solomon’s great maxim, ^ In much wis- 
dom is much sorrow.’ But how accurately 
all this fitted in with what would naturallj^ 
be the doctrines of the men on whose track 
I was ! I could no longer doubt the just- 


THE S. S. 197 

ness of my reasonings, and immediately, 
while you slept, I set off for London. 

Of my haps in London I need not 
give you a very particular account. The 
meeting was to be held on the 15th, and 
by the morning of the 13th I had reached 
a place called Wargrave, on the Thames. 
There I hired a light canoe, and thence 
proceeded down the river in a some- 
what zig-zag manner, narrowly examining 
the banks on either side, and keeping a 
sharp outlook for some board or sign or 
house that would seem to betoken any sort 
of connection with the word ^^sopi.’ In 
this way I passed a fruitless day, and hav- 
ing reached the shipping-region, made 
fast my craft, and in a spirit of diablerie 
spent the night in a common lodging-house, 
in the company of the most remarkable 
human beings, characterized by an odor 
of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive honne 
camaraderie which the prevailing fear of 
death could not altogether repress. By 
dawn of the 14th I was on my journey 


198 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


again, — on, and ever on. Eagerly I longed 
for sight of the word I sought ; but I had 
misjudged the men against whose cunning 
I had measured my own. I should have 
remembered more consistently that they 
were no ordinary men. As I was destined 
to find, there lay a deeper, more cabalistic 
meaning in the motto than any I had been 
able to dream of. I had proceeded on my 
pilgrimage down the river a long way past 
Greenwich, and had now reached a deso- 
late and level reach of land stretching 
away on either hand. Paddling my boat 
from the right to the left bank, I came to 
a spot where a little arm of the river ran 
up some few yards into the land. The 
place wore a specially dreary and deserted 
aspect : the land was flat, and covered with 
low shrubs. I rowed into this arm of shal- 
low water and rested on my oar, w'earily 
bethinking myself what w^as next to be 
done. Looking round, however, I saw to 
my surprise that at the end of this arm 
there was a short narrow pathway — a 


THE S. S. 


199 


winding road — leading from the river- 
bank. I stood up in the boat and followed 
its course with my eyes. It was met by 
another road, also winding among the 
bushes, but in a slightly different direction. 
At the end of this was a little low, 
high-roofed, round house, without doors or 
windows. And then — and then — tin^linc? 
now with a thousand raptures, I beheld a 
pool of water near this structure, and then 
another low house, a counterpart of the 
first ; and then, still leading on in the same 
direction, another pool ; and then a great 
rock, heart-shaped ; and then another wind- 
ing road ; and then another pool of water. 
All was a model, exact to the minutest par- 
ticular, of the device on the papyrus ! The 
first long-waved line was the river itself; 
the three short-waved lines were the arm 
of the river and the two pools ; the three 
snakes were the three winding roads ; the 
two triangles, representing the letter A, 
were the two high-roofed, round houses ; 
the heart was the rock ! 1 sprang, now 


200 


PKINCE ZALESKI. 



thoroughly excited, from the boat, and ran 
in headlong haste to the end of the last 
lake. Here there was a rather thick and 
high growth of bushes, but peering among 
them my eye at once caught a white 
oblong board supported on a stake ; on 
this, in black letters, was marked the 
words, ‘ Descensus ^sopi.’ It was neces- 
sary, therefore, to go down; the meeting- 
place was subterranean. It was without 
difficulty that I discovered a small opening 
in the ground, half-hidden by the under- 
wood. From the orifice I found that a 
series of wooden steps led directly down- 
wards, and I at once boldly descended. No 
sooner, however, had I touched the bottom 
than I was confronted by an ancient man 
in Hellenic apparel, armed with the Greek 
xiphos and peUe. His eyes, accustomed to 


THE S. S. 201 

the gloom, pierced me long with an earnest 
scrutiny. 

^ You are a Spartan ? ’ he asked at 
length. 

^ Yes/ I answered promptly. 

^ Then how is it you do not know that 
I am stone deaf?’ 

I shrugged, indicating that for the 
moment I had forgotten the fact. 

‘“You are a Spartan ? ’ he repeated. 

“ I nodded with emphasis. 

‘‘ ‘ Then how is it you omit to make 
the sign ? ’ 

“Now, you must not suppose that at 
this point I was nonplussed ; for in that 
case you would not give due weight to the 
strange inherent power of the mind to rise 
to the occasion of a sudden emergency, 
to stretch itself long to the length of an 
event. I do not hesitate to say that no 
combination of circumstances can defeat a 
vigorous brain fully alert, and in possession 
of itself. With a quickness to which the 
lightning flash is tardy, I remembered that 


202 


PRINCE ZALESKI. 


this was a spot indicated by the symbols on 
the papyrus ; I remembered that this same 
papyrus was always placed under the 
tongue of the dead ; I remembered, too, 
that among that very nation whose lan- 
guage had afforded the motto, to ‘ turn up 
the thumh ’ (pollicem vertere) was a symbol 
significant of death. I touched the under 
surface of my tongue with the tip of my 
thumb. The aged man was appeased. I 
passed on, and examined the place. 

It was simply a vast circular hall, the 
arched roof of which was supported on 
colonnades of what I took to be pillars of 
porphyry. Down the middle and round 
the sides ran tables of the same material ; 
the walls were clothed in hangings of 
sable velvet, on which, in infinite reproduc- 
tion, was embroidered in cypher the motto 
of the society. The chairs were cushioned 
in the same stuff. Near the centre of the 
circle stood a huge statue of what really 
seemed to me to be pure beaten gold. On 
the great ebon base was inscribed the word 


THE S. S. 


203 

ATKTPrOS. From the roof swung by 
brazen chains a single misty lamp. 

“ Having seen this much, I reascended to 
the land of light, and being fully resolved 
on attending the meeting on the next day 
or night, and not knowing what my fate 
might then be, I wrote to inform you of the 
means by which my body might be traced. 

But on the next day a new thought 
occurred to me : I reasoned thus : ^ These 
men are not common assassins ; they wage 
a too rash warfare against diseased life, 
but not against life in general. In all 
probability they have a quite immoderate, 
quite morbid reverence for the sanctity of 
healthy life. They will not therefore take 
mine, iinlesB they suppose me to be the 
only living outsider who has a knowledge 
of their secret, and therefore think it 
absolutely necessary for the carrying out 
of their beneficent designs that my life 
should be sacrificed. I will therefore pre- 
vent such a motive from occurring to them 
by communicating to another their whole 


204 


PKINCE ZALESKI. 


secret, and, if the necessity should arise, 
letting them know that I have done so, with- 
out telling them who that other is. Thus 
my life will be assured.’ I therefore 
wrote to you on that day a full account of 
all I had discovered, giving you to under- 
stand, however, on the envelope, that you 
need not examine the contents for soine 
little time. 

I waited in the subterranean vault 
during the greater part of the next day, 
but not till midnight did the confederates 
gather. What happened at that meeting 
I shall not disclose, even to you. All was 
sacred, solemn, full of awe. Of the choral 
hymns there sung, the hierophantic ritual, 
liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbol- 
isms ; of the wealth there represented, the 
culture, art, self-sacrifice ; of the ming- 
ling of all the tongues of Europe, — 1 
shall not speak ; nor shall I repeat names 
which you would at once recognize as 
familiar to you, though I may, perhaps, 
mention that the ^ Morris ’ whose name 


THE S. S. ' 


205 


appears on the papyrus sent to me is a 
wejl-known litterateur of that name. But 
this in confidence, for some years at 
least. 

Let me, however, hurry to a conclu- 
sion. My turn came to speak. I rose 
undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself. 
During the moment of hush, of wide-eyed 
paralysis that ensued, I declared that, fully 
as I coincided with their views in gen- 
eral, I found myself unable to regard 
their methods with approval, — these I 
could not but consider too rash, too harsh, 
too premature. My voice was suddenly 
drowned by one universal earth-shaking 
roar of rage and contempt, during which 
I was surrounded on all sides, seized, pin- 
ioned, and dashed on the central table. 
All this time, in the hope and love of 
life, I passionately shouted that I was not 
the only living being who shared in their 
secret. But my voice was drowned and 
drowned again in the whirling tumult. 
None heard me. A powerful and little- 


206 


PEINCE ZALESKI. 


known anaesthetic — the means hy which 
all their murders have been accomplished 
— w^as now produced. A cloth saturated 
with the fluid was placed on my mouth 
and nostrils. I was stifled. Sense failed. 
The incubus of the universe blackened 
down upon my brain. How I tugged at 
the mandrakes of speech ! was a locked 
pugilist with language ! In the depth of 
my extremity the half-thought, I remem- 
ber, floated like a mist through my fading 
consciousness that now perhaps — now — 
there was silence around me ; that now, 
could my palsied lips find dialect I should 
be heard, and understood. My whole soul 
rose focussed to the effort, my body jerked 
itself upwards. At that moment I knew 
my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. 
For I did utter something, my dead and 
shuddering tongue did babble forth some 
coherency. Then I fell back, and all was 
once more the ancient Dark. On the next 
day, when I woke, I was lying on my back 
in my little boat, placed there, by God 


THE S. S. 


207 


knows whose hands. At all events, one 
thing was clear, — I had uttered something, 
— I was saved. With what of strength re- 
mained to me, I reached the place where 
I had left your caliche, and started on my 
homeward way. The necessity to sleep 
was strong upon me, for the fumes of the 
anaesthetic still clung about my brain ; 
hence, after my long journey, I fainted on 
my passage through the house, and in this 
condition you found me. 

Such then is the history of my think- 
ings and doings in connection with this 
ill-advised confraternity ; and now that 
their cabala is known to others, — to how 
many others they cannot guess, — I think 
it is not unlikely that we shall hear little 
more of the Society of Sparta.” 


THE END. 





1 




< -I 


r 




t 

Messrs. Roberts Brothers’ Publications. 


DISCORDS. 

91 ^^olume of ^torieoj . 

By GEORGE EGERTON, author of “ Keynotes.’* 

AMERICAN COPYRIGHT EDITION. 

i6mo. Cloth. Price, $i.oo. ' 


♦ 

J 

George Egerton’s new volume entitled “Discords,” a collection of short stories, 

IS more talked about, just now, than any other fiction of the day. The collection is 
really stories for story-writers. They are precisely the quality which literary folk will 
wrangle over. Harold Frederic cables from London to the “ New York Times ” that 
the book is making a profound impression there. It is published on both sides, the 
Roberts House bringing it out in Boston. George Egerton, like George Eliot and 
George Sand, is a woman’s ttom de plume. The extraordinary frankness with which 
life in general is discussed in these stories not unnaturally arrests attention. — 
Lilian Whiting. • 

The English woman, known as yet only by the name of George Egerton, who 
made something of a stir in the world by a volume of strong stories called “.Keynotes,” <• 
has brought out a new book under the rather uncomfortable title of “ Discords.” 
These stories show us pessimism run wild ; the gloomy things that can happen to a 
human being are so dwelt upon as to leave the impression that in the author’s own 
world there is no light. The relations of the sexes are treated of in bitter irony, which 
develops into actual horror as the pages pass. But in all this there is a rugged 
grandeur of style, a keen analysis of motive, and a deepness of pathos that stamp 
George Egerton as one of the greatest women writers of the day. “ Discords ” has 
been called a volume of stories J it is a misnomer, for the book contains merely varying 
episodes in lives of men and women, with no plot, no beginning nor ending. — Boston 
Traveller. 

This is a new volume of psychological stories from the pen and brains of George 
Egerton, the author of “ Keynotes.” Evidently the titles of the author’s books are 
selected according to musical principles. The first story in the book is “A Psycho, 
logical Moment at Three Periods.” It is all strength rather than sentiment. The 
story of the child, of the girl, and of the woman is told, and told by one to whom the 
mysteries of the life of each are familiarly known. In their very truth, as the writer 
has so subtly analyzed her triple characters, they sadden one to think that such things 
must be ; yet as they are real, they are bound to be disclosed by somebody and in due 
time. I he author betrays remarkable penetrative skill and perception, and dissects 
the human heart with a power from whose demonstration the sensitive nature may 
instinctively shrink even while fascinated with the narration and hypnotized by the 
treatment exhibited. — Courier. 


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THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE 
. INMOST LIGHT. 

BY ARTHUR MACHEN. 

KEYNOTES SERIES. 

i 6 mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 

♦ 

A couple of tales by Arthur Machen, presumably an Englishman, published 
aesthetically in this country by Roberts Brothers. They are horror stories, the 
horror being of the vague psychologic kind and dependent, in each case, upon a man 
of science who tries to effect a change in individual personality by an operation upon 
the brain cells. The implied lesson is that it is dangerous and unwise to seek t' 
probe the mystery separating mind and matter. These sketches are extremely stroi 
and we guarantee the “ shivers ” to anyone who reads them. — Hartford Courant. 

For two stories of the most marvelous and improbable character, yet told with 
wonderful realism and naturalness, the palm for this time will have to be awarded to 
Arthur Machen, for “ The Great God Pan and the Inmost Light,” two stories just 
published in one book They are fitting companions to the famous stories by Edgar 
Allan Poe both in matter and style. “The Great God Pan” is founded upon an 
experiment made upon a girl by which she was enabled for a moment to see the god 
Pan, but with most disastrous results, the most wonderful of which is revealed at the 
end of the story, and which solution the reader will eagerly seek to reach. From the 
first mystery or tragedy follow in rapid succession. “ The Inmost Light” is equally 
as remarkable for its imaginative power and perfect air of probability. Anything in 
the legitimate line of psychology utterly pales before these stories of such plausibility. 
Boston Home fournal. 

Precisely who the great god Pan of Mr. Machen’s first tale is, we did not quite 
discover when we read it, or, discovering, we have forgotten ; but our impression is 
that under the idea of that primitive great deity he impersonated, or meant to im- 
personate, the evil influences that attach to woman, the fatality of feminine beauty, 
which, like the countenance of the great god Pan, is deadly to all who behold it. 
His heroine is a beautiful woman, who ruins the souls and bodies of those over whom 
she casts her spells, being as good as a Suicide Club, if we may say so, to those who 
love her; and to whom she is Death. Something like this, if not this exactly, is, we 
take it, the interpretation of Mr. Machen’s uncanny parable, which is too obscure 
to justify itself as an imaginative creation and too morbid to be the production of a 
healthy mind. The kind of writing which it illustrates is a bad one, and this is one 
of the worst of the kind. It is not terrible, but horrible. — R. H. S. in Mail and 
Express. 


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A CHILD OF THE AGE. 

a NDtJci. 


BY FRANCIS ADAMS 

{KEYNOTES SERIES.) 

With titlepage by Aubrey Beardsley. i 6 mo. Cloth. 
Price, $1.00. 


This story by Francis Adams was originally published under the title of 
“Leicester, an Autobiography,” in 1884, when the author was only twenty-two years 
of age. That would make him thirty- two years old now, if he were still living. He 
was but eighteen years old when it was first drafted by him. Sometime after publica- 
tion, he revised the work, and in its present form it is now published again, practi- 
cally a posthumous production. We can with truthfulness characterize it as a tale of 
fresh originality, deep spiritual meaning, and exceptional power. It fairly buds, 
blossoms, and fruits with suggestions that search the human spirit through. No 
similar production has come from the hand of any author in our time. That Francis 
Adams would have carved out a remarkable career for himself had he continued to 
live, this little volume, all compact with significant suggestion, attests on many a 
page. It exalts, inspires, comforts, and strengthens all together. It instructs by 
suggestion^ spiritualizes the thought by its elevating and purifying narrative, and 
feeds the hungering spirit with food it is only too ready to accept and assimilate. 
Those who read its pages with an eager curiosity the first time will be pretty sure 
to return to them for a second slower and more meditative perusal. The book is 
assuredly the promise and potency of great things unattained in the too brief life- 
time of its gifted author. We heartily commend it as a book not only of remarkable 
power, but as the product of a human spirit whose merely intellectual gifts were but , 
a fractional part of his inclusive spiritual endowments. — Courier. 

But it is a remarkable work — as a pathological study almost unsurpassed. It 
produces the impression of a photograph from life, so vividly realistic is the treatment. 
To this result the author’s style, with its fidelity of microscopic detail, doubtless 
contributes. — Evening Traveller. 

This story by Francis Adams is one to read slowly, and then to read a second 
time. It is powerfully written, full of strong suggestion, unlike, in fact, anything we 
have recently read. What he would have done in the way of literary creation, had he 
lived, is, of course, only a matter of conjecture. What he did we have before us in 
this remarkable book. — Boston Advertiser. 


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THE DANCING FAUN. 


Bv FLORENCE FARR. 

IVith Title-page and Caver TTesign hjf Auhrejf Beardslejf. 
1 6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 


We welcome the light and merry pen of Miss Farr as one of the deftest that 
has been wielded in the style of to-day. She has written the cleverest and the 
most cynical sensation story of the season. — Liverpool Daily Post, 

Slight as it is, the story is, in its way, strong. — Literary World. 

Full of bright paradox, and paradox which is no mere topsy-turvy play upon 
words, but the product of serious thinking upon life. One of the cleverest of 
recent novels. — Star. 

It is full of epigrammc.tic effects, and it has a certain thread of pathos calcu- 
lated to win our spmpathy. — Queen. 

The story is subtle and psychological after the fashion of modern psychology ; 
it is undeniably clever and smartly written. — Gentlewoman. 

No one can deny its freshness and wit. Indeed there are things in it here and 
there which John Oliver Hobbes herself might have signed without loss of repu- 
tation. — Woman. 

There is a lurid power in the very unreality of the story. One does not quite 
understand how Lady Geraldine worked herself up to shooting her lover; but 
when she has done it, the description of what passes through her mind is 
magnificent. — A thenaum. 

Written by an obviously clever woman. — Black and White. 

Miss Farr has talent. “The Dancing Faun ” contains writing that is distinc- 
tively good. Doubtless it is only a prelude to something much stronger. — 
Academy. 

As a work of art, the book has the merit of brevity and smart writing, while 
the denouement is skilfully prepared, and comes as a surprise- If the book had 
been intended as a satire on the “ new woman ” sort of literature, it would have 
been most brilliant ; but assuming it to be w'ritten in earnest, we can heartily 
praise the form of its construction without agreeing with the sentiments expressed. 
St. James's Gazette. 

Shows considerable power and aptitude. — Saturday Review. 

Miss Farr is a clever writer whose apprenticeship at playwriting can easily be 
detected in the epigrammatic conversations with which this book is filled, and 
whose characters expound a philosophy of life which strongly recalls Oscar 
Wilde’s later interpretations. . . . The theme of the tale is heredity developed 
in a most unpleasant manner. The leading idea that daughters inherit the father’s 
qualities, good or evil, while sons resemble their mother, is well sustained — 
Home your7tal. 


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Alr^ George Aleredith is the greatest English novelist living; he is 
probably the greatest novelist of our time. He is a man of genius^ a 
literary artist^ and truly a great writer. — The Beacon. 


GEORGE MEREDITH’S NOVELS. 


TITLES. 


THE ORDEAL OF R'CHARD 
FEVEREL. 

EVAN HARRINGTON. 

HARRY RICHMOND. 

SANDRA BELLONI. 
VITTORIA. 

ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS. 


RHODA FLEMING. 
BEAUCHAMP’S CAREER. 

THE EGOIST. 

DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS. 
THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT, 
AND FARINA. 

THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS. 


SOME PRESS NOTICES. 

Mr. Meredith’s novels are an intellectual tonic. They are the great, and in- 
deed, we may say, they are the only novels of any living author which deserve to 
be called great. They will take the same high and permanent rank that is as- 
signed to the novels of George Eliot and George Sand. They are deeper in 
intellectual power than Dickens, while they have less of his dramatizations. They 
are an intellectual mine, and will repay careful study. — Boston Traveller. 

The London “Athenaeum*' says of “Diana of the Crossways”: “It is a 
study of character, and it is also a study of emotion ; it is a picture of fact and of 
the world, and it is touched with generous romance ; it is rich in kindly comedy, 
and it abounds in natural passion ; it sets forth a selection of many human ele- 
ments, and it is joyful and sorrowful, wholesome with laughter and fruitful of tears 
as life itself” 

Mr. Meredith’s novels certainly have the qualities which we marked as essen- 
tial to permanent literature. They can set before you pictures of happy love, or 
of youth and nature that can never be forgotten ; scenes that flash before your 
eyes when your thoughts are elsewhere. . . . Whoever reads Mr. Meredith does 
not waste his time. He is in good company, among gentlemen and ladies ; 
above all, in the company of a Genius . — Daily News. 

Genius of a truly original and spontaneous kind shines in every one of these 
books; of fancy there is only too much, perhaps; with healthy benevolent sym- 
pathy they abound ; and if there exists any greater master of his native tongue 
than Mr. Meredith, we have yet to hear of the gentleman’s name. — St. James's 
Gazette. 

It was not until 1859, when he had reached the age of thirty-two, that he pro- 
duced “The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,” his first mature novel, charged to the 
brim with earnestness, wit, strength of conception. Meredith’s stories generally 
end happily; but this one is profoundly tragic. I have read many of his chapters 
without being moved, even when the situation in itself must theoretically be ac- 
knowledged an affecting one. But it seems to me that the heart which is not 
touched, and the eyes that do not become moist, in the reading of the last portions 
of “Richard Feverel” must be indurated with a glaze of indiTerence which is 
not to be envied. — G. P. Lathrop, in Atlantic Monthly. 


12 Volumes, English Edition, uncut, l2mo. Price, $2.00. 

12 Volumes, English Edition, half calf. Extra, $30.00 the set. 

12 Volumes, Popular American Edition, i6mo, cloth. Price, $1.50. 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 


Messrs. Roberts- Brothers Publications. 


ALBRECHT. 

By Arlo Bates, author of “A Lad’s Love,” ‘‘Berries of 
the Brier,” etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^i.oo. 

Arlo Bates has given us a genuine old-time romance in “ Albrecht,” in 
which the hero, a kobold, is endowed with a soul through his marriage with 
a saintly Christian maiden. Jt takes us back to the time of Charlemagne, 
and the action occurs in the forests of Schwarzwold, which are peopled by 
supernatural beings, including the kobolds, whose striking resemblance to 
human kind places the men and women who may fall in their way in constant 
danger of being deceived. The heroine loves one of these strange creatures 
in the guise of a handsome knight, and after she has become a wife is sub- 
ject to longings and temptations to which she had been a stranger in her 
days of happy, innocent girlhood. A good father confessor is the guardian 
angel of the strangely wedded pair, and through his intervention their 
earthly and eternal happiness is finally assured. The romance is a welcome 
change from the eternal round of commonplace realism with which we are 
now afflicted, and without intending to be didactic, conveys many lessons 
which he who runs may read. It reveals a poetic and refined imagination 
at every step; and though it may recall “ Undine” to many readers, it is 
not in any sense an imitation of that immortal work. There are a number 
of graceful lyrics introduced in “ Albrecht,” which are artistically in harmony 
with the atmosphere of this fascinating tale. Those who wish to get away 
from this work-a-day world for a brief period should read it by all means. — 
Saturday Evening Gazette. 

Mr. Arlo Bates has written a kind of counterpart to “Undine” in 
“Albrecht.” It is pure romance, avowedly non-didactic, but dealing, in its 
own peculiar, suggestive way, with one of those psychical problems which 
have always interested and perplexed thinkers. The story is cast in the 
form of a Teutonic romance of the time of Charlemagne. . . . Throughout 
the tale an atmosphere of glamor surrounds everything, and the reader is 
put and kept in the proper milieu with an art deserving high praise. 
There is much poetry and picturesqueness in the description ; and while 
the tissue of the romance is distinctly light, the colors ate appropriate, they 
are laid on skilf dly and harmoniously, and the general effect is pleasing and 
gratifying . — New York Tribune. 


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Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Ptiblications. 


The GAMEi^EEPER AT Home. 

of Natural J^tstorg anl3 Eural Hife. 

By RICHARD JEFFERIES. 

One volume. 8vo. Illustrated hy Charles IVhymper. 
Price, ^i. 75 . A cheaper edition, price, pi.^o. 


Richard Jefferies, whose essays on subjects of natural history and rural life 
are the most appreciative of any written by English authors, describes work and 
ways but little known to American readers in his new book, “ The Gamekeeper 
at Home.” It is an out-door experience, dealing directly, and with little senti- 
ment, with the furred and feathered animals, wild and domestic, of the fields and 
woods around him. It has its pleasures from association with Nature, in observa- 
tion and sport, which tones character and exhilarates thought and action ; but it 
has its pains from the poaching of villagers and others, the trespassing of destruc- 
tive birds and beasts, and routine labor. 

It is the part of the author to put himself in the place of the gamekeeper, 
and describe to others those pleasures and pains. But the facts are from his own 
observation, which permits of criticism, and introduction of general information, 
suggestive of his characteristic studies. It is a novel subject, and has great 
interest. — Boston Globe. 

The number of the admirers of Richard Jefferies has steadily increased since 
his death, two or three years ago. His limpid style, his love for outdoor life and 
sympathy with Nature, his keen observation of plant and animal characteristics, 
are always fresh and pleasing. — Christian Union. 


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The Truth 
About Clement Ker. 

By GEORGE FLEMING, 

Author of “ Kismf.t,” “Mirage,” “Andromeda,” “The Head of 
Medusa,” and “Vestigia.” 

\ 

One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Price, 75 cents. 

• 

George Fleming, the author of “ Kismet ” and “ Mirage,” never disappoints 
us in her literary work. Although she has not yet written a great novel, all her 
stories are bright, clever, and readable. “ The Truth about Clement Ker ” is an 
artistic ghost story. It is interesting from beginning to end ; it is a delightful 
mixture of the natural and the supernatural, of fiction and of fact. It is full of a 
weird mysterious suggestiveness which keeps the reader’s imagination on the alert, 
and yet never develops into the sensational or absurd. There is a harmony about 
all the incidents in the story before us, which is a strong evidence of the writer’s 
literary taste. No one part i.s treated with any more realism than another. But 
characters and incidents find their places in a shadowy atmosphere whose very 
indistinctness is a part of its charm. In these days of realism, psychology and 
hypnotism must have their part in our ghost stories; the occult forces ot the uni- 
verse must at least seem to be in sympathy with any attempt to portray the super- 
natural. Nor has the present writer been ignorant of this truth. The book 
before us is one of the best short stories of the day ; a brilliant sketch, admirably 
conceived and executed. — Transcript. 

Miss Fletcher introduces into her new' story psychological and supernatural 
elements. It is especially notable for the atmosphere of mystery which envelops 
it, and for the skill with which startling incidents are dealt. “The characters 
are strongly drawn, and the whole book bears witness to the closeness of Miss 
Fletcher’s observation and her insight into the real natures of men and women,” 
says Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton. 

To their excellent little “ Handy Library,” which, in spite of its extreme youth, 
already promises to attain a good and honored old age, Messrs. Roberts Brothers 
have just added “ The Truth about Clement Ker ” A novel by George Fleming 
stands in little need of newspaper comment to insure its popularity, and certainly 
this already widely known story is no exception. The straightforward unfolding 
of its rather unusual plot, its capital character sketching, and above all, the fresh- 
ness and vigor with which the old and ever new subject is treated, recommend to ' 
the most jaded novel reader. — Washington Capitol. 

♦ 

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KEYNOTES. 

31 iBolume of Stories?* 

\ 

By George Egerton. With titlepage by Aubre\ 
Beardsley. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $i.oo. 


I 

Not since “The Story of an African Farm” was written has any woman de- 
livered herself of so strong, so forcible a book. — Qiteen. 

Knotty questions in sex problems are dealt with in these brief sketches. They 
are treated boldly, fearlessly, perhaps we may say forcefully, with a deep plunge 
into the realities of life. The colors are laid in masses on the canvas, while 
passions, temperaments, and sudden, subtle analyses take form under the quick, 
sharp stroke. Though they contain a vein of coarseness and touch slightly upon 
tabooed subjects, they evidence power and thought. — Public Opinion. 

Indeed, we do not hesitate to say that “ Keynotes ” is the strongest volume 
of short stories that the year has produced. Further, w'C would wager a good 
deal, were it necessary, that George Egerton is a nom-de-plume, and of a woman, 
too. Why is it that so many women hide beneath a man’s name when they enter 
the field of authorship? And in this case it seems doubly foolish, the w'ork is so 
intensely strong. . . . 

The chief characters of these stories are women, and women drawn as only a 
woman can draw word-pictures of her own sex. The subtlety of analysis is 
wonderful, direct in its effectiveness, unerring in its truth, and stirring in its reveal- 
ing power. Truly, no one but a woman could thus throw the light of revelation 
upon her own sex. Man does not understand woman as does the author of 
“ Keynotes.” 

The vitality of the stories, too, is remarkable. Life, very real life, is pictured ; 
life full of joys and sorrows, happinesses and heartbreaks, courage and self-sacrifice ; 
of self-abnegation, of struggle, of victory- The characters are intense, yet not 
overdrawn ; the experiences are dramatic, in one sense or another, and yet are 
never hyper-emotional. And all is told with a power of concentration that is 
simply astonishing. A sentence does duty for a chapter, a paragraph for a picture 
of years of experience. 

Indeed, for vigor, originality, forcefulness of expression, and completeness of 
character presentation, “ Keynotes” surpasses any recent volume of short fiction 
that we can recall. — Times, Boston. 

It brings a new quality and a striking new force into the -literature of the 
hour. — The Speaker. 

The mind that conceived “ Keynotes ” is so strong and original that one will 
loojc with deep interest for the successors of this first book, at once powerful and 
appealingly feminine. — Irish Independent. 


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ROBERT LOOIS STEVENSON’S WORKS. 


TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES. 

With a Frontispiece Illustration by Walter Crane. (Paper 
cover, 50 cents.) i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 

Mr. Stevenson’s journey in the Cevennes gage. He was deplorably ignorant, neither 
is a bright and amusing book for summer knowing how to pack his load nor drive his 
reading. The author set out alone, on donkey; and his early experience forms a 
foot, for a twelve days’ journey over the ridiculous record of disaster. — Providence 
mountains, with a donkey to carry his lug- Journal. 


AN INLAND VOYAGE. i6mo. ^i.oo. 


Unlike Captain Macgregor, of “ Rob 
Roy ” fame, Mr. Stevenson does not make 
canoeing itself his main theme, but de- 
lights in charming bits of description that, 
in their close attention to picturesque 
detail, remind one of the work of a skilled 
“genre” painter. Nor does he hesitate, 
from time to time, to diverge altogether 
from his immediate subject, and to indulge 
in a strain of gently humorous reflection 


that furnishes some of the pleasantest pas- 
sages of the book. ... In a modest and 
quiet way, Mr. Stevenson’s book is one of 
the very best of the year for summer read- 
ing The volume has a very neat design 
for the cover, with a fanciful picture of the 
“Arethusa” and “Cigarette,” the canoes 
of the author and his companion. — Good 
Literature. 


THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS. With a Frontispiece 

$1.00. 


by Walter Crane, ibmo. 

Mr. Stevenson is an invalid, and in 
search of health he went to Mount Saint 
Helena, in California, and high up in its 
sides took possession of a miner’s cabin 
fast falling to ruin, — one of the few rem- 
nants of the abandoned mining village of 
Silverado. There, with his wife and a 
single servant, considerable time was spent. 
The interest of the book centred in the 


graphic style and keen observation of the 
author. He has the power of describing 
places and characters with such vividness 
that you seem to have made personal 
acquaintance with both ... Mr Steven- 
son’s racy narrative brings many phases of 
life upon the western coast before one with 
striking power and captivating grace. — 
Netv York VYorld. 


TREASURE ISLAND. A Story of Pirates and the Spanish 

Main, With 28 Illustrations. i2mo. (Paper covers, 50 cents.) 
$1.25. Cheaper edition. i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 


At a time when the books of Mayne 
Reid, Rallantyne, and Kingston are taking 
their places on the shelves to which well- 
thumbed volumes are relegated, it will be 
with especial delight that boy readers wel- 
come a new writer in the literature of ad- 
venture. In “Treasure Island,” Robert 
Louis Stevenson takes a new departure, 
and writes one of the jolliest, most read- 
able, wide-awake tales of sea life that have 
set the blood tingling in the veins of the 
boys of at least the present generation. It 
is decidedly of the exciting order of stories, 
yet not of the unhealthily sensational. It 


details the stirring adventures of an Eng- 
lish crew in their search for the immense 
treasure secreted by a pirate captain, and 
it certainly has not a dull page in it- Yet 
the author has contrived to keep the sym- 
pathy on the side of virtue and honesty, 
and throw upon the pirates that odium and 
detestation which their nefarious courses 
deserve ; and the book is one heartily to 
be commended to any sturdy, wholesome 
lad who is fond of the smell of the brine 
and the tang of sailor speech in his read- 
ing. — Boston Courier. 


PRINCE OTTO. A Romance. i6mo. ^i.oo. 


Whatever Mr. Stevenson writes is sure is so charming in every page this author 
to be interesting and even absorbing ; and has published, and so unhackneyed that 
to this “ Prince Otto ” is no exception. It one knows not what to expect from any 
is a graceful and unusual romance, full of one paragraph to the next. — Boston 
surprises, full of that individuality which Courier. 


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A STRANGE CAREER. 

-j 


LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF 
JOHN GLADWYN JEBB. 

BY HIS WIDOW. 

With an Introduction by H. Rider Haggard, and a por- 
trait of Mr. Jebb. i2mo, cloth. Price, $1.25. 

A remarkable romance of modern life. — Daily Chronicle. 

Exciting to a degree. — Black and White. 

Full of breathless interest. — Times. 

Reads like fiction. — Daily Graphic. 

Pages which will hold their readers fast to the very end. — Graphic. 

A better told and more marvellous narrative of a real life was never put 
into the covers of a small octavo volume. — To-Day. 

As fascinating as any romance. . . . The book is of the most entranc- 
ing interest. — St. James's Budget. 

Those who love stories of adventure will find a volume to their taste in 
the “ Life and Adventures of John Gladwyn Jebb,” just published, and to 
which an introduction is furnished by Rider Haggard. The latter says 
that rarely, if ever, in this nineteenth century, has a man lived so strange 
and varied an existence as did Mr. Jebb. From the time that he came to 
manhood he was a wanderer ; and how he survived the many perils of his 
daily life is certainly a mystery. . . . The strange and remarkable adven- 
tures of which we have an account in this volume were in Guatemala, Brazil, 
in our own far West with the Indians on the plains, in mining camps in 
Colorado and California, in Texas, in Cuba and Mexico, where occurred 
the search for Montezuma’s, or rather Guatemoc’s treasure, to which Mr. 
Haggard believes that Mr. Jebb held the key, but which through his deatli 
is now forever lost. The story is one of thrilling interest from beginning 
to end, the story of a born adventurer, unselfish, sanguine, romantic, of a 
man too mystical and poetic in his nature for this prosaic nineteenth cen- 
tury, but who, as a crusader or a knight errant, would have won distinguished 
success. The volume is a notable addition to the literature of adventure. 
— Boston Advertiser. 


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POOR FOLK. 


a illotJcL 

Translated from the Russian of Fedor Dostoievsky, by 
Lena Milman, with decorative titlepage and a criti- 
cal introduction by George Moore. American 
Copyright edition. 

16 mo. Cloth. $1.00. 


A capable critic writes : “ One of the most beautiful, touching stories I have 
read. The character of the old clerk is a masterpiece, a kind of Russian Charles 
Lamb. He reminds me, too, of Anatole France’s ‘ Sylvestre Bonnard,’ but it 
is* a more poignant, moving figure How wonderfully, too, the sad little strokes 
of humor are blended into the pathos in his characterization, and how fascinating 
all the naive self-revelations of his poverty become, — all his many ups and downs 
and hopes and fears. His unsuccessful visit to the money-lender, his despair at the 
office, unexpectedly ending in a sudden burst of good fortune, the final despair- 
ing cry of his love for Varvara, — these hold one breathless One can hardly 
read them without tears. . . . But there is no need to say all that could be said 
about the book. It is enough to say that it is over powerful and beautiful.” 

We are glad to welcome a good translation of the Russian Dostoievsky’s 
story “ Poor Folk,” Englished by Lena Milman. It is a tale of unrequited love, 
conducted in the form of letters written between a poor clerk and his girl cousin 
whom he devotedly loves, and who finally leaves him to marry a man not admir- 
able in character who, the reader feels, will not make her happy. The pathos of 
the book centres in the clerk, Makar’s, unselfish affection and his heart-break at 
being left lonesome by his charming kinswoman whose epistles have been his one 
solace. In the'conductment of the story, realistic sketches of middle class Rus- 
sian life are given, heightening the effect of the denoument. George Moore writes 
a sparkling introduction to the book. — Hartford Courant. 

Dostoievsky is a great artist. ‘‘Poor Folk” is a great novel — Boston 
A dvertiser. 

It is a most beautiful and touching story, and will linger in the mind long 
after the book is closed. The pathos is blended with touching bits of humor, 
that are even pathetic in themselves. — Boston Times. 

Notwithstanding that “ Poor Folk ” is told in that most exasperating and 
entirely unreal style — by letters — it is complete in sequence, and the interest 
does not flag as the various phases in the sordid life of the two characters are 
developed. The theme is inten.sely pathetic and truly human, while its treat- 
ment is exceedingly artistic. The translator, Lena Milman, seems to have well 
preserved the spirit of the original — Cambridge Tribune. 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

BOSTON, MASS. 

T 


Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


25 al 3 ac in Cnglijit). 

THE VILLAGE RECTOR. 

By Honors de Balzac. 

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. i2mo. 
Half Russia. Price, ^1.50. 


Once more that wonderful acquaintance which Balzac had with all callings 
appears manifest in this work. Would you get to the bottom of the engineer’s 
occupation in France? Balzac presents it in the whole system, with its aspects, 
disadvantages, and the excellence of the work accomplished. We write to-day 
of irrigation and of arboriculture as if they were novelties : yet in the waste lands 
of Montagnac, Balzac found these topics ; and what he wrote is the clearest 
exposition of the subjects. 

But, above all, in “The Village Rector” is found the most potent of religious 
ideas, — the one that God grants pardon to sinners. Balzac had studied and 
appreciated the intensely human side of Catholicism and its adaptiveness to the 
wants of mankind. It is religion, with Balzac, “ that opens to us an inexhaustible 
treasure of indulgence.” It is true repentance that saves. 

The drama which is unrolled in “The Village Rector” is a terrible one, and 
perhaps repugnant to our sensitive minds. The selection of such a plot, pitiless 
as it is, Balzac made so as to present the darkest side of human nature, and to 
show how, through God’s pity, a soul might be saved. The instrument of mercy 
is the Rector Bonnet, and in the chapter entitled “ The Rector at Work ” he 
shows how religion “ extends a man’s life beyond the world.” It is not sufficient 
to weep and moan. “That is but the beginning; the end is action.” The 
rector urges the woman whose sins are great to devote what remains of her life 
to work for the benefit of her brothers and sisters, and so she sets about reclaim- 
ing the waste lands which surround her chateau. With a talent of a superlative 
order, which gives grace to Veronique, she is like the Madonna of some old panel 
of Van Eyck’s. Doing penance, she wears close to her tender skin a haircloth 
vestment. For love of her, a man has committed murder and died and kept his 
secret. In her youth, Veronique’s face had been pitted, but her saintly life had 
obliterated that spotted mantle of smallpox. 'Fears had washed out every blemish. 
If through true repentance a soul was ever saved, it was Veronique’s. This 
work, too, has afforded consolation to many miserable sinners, and showed them 
the w’ay to grace. 

'Fhe present translation is to be cited for its wonderful accuracy and its literary 
distinction. We can hardly think of a more difficult task than the Englishing of 
Balzac, and a general reading public should be grateful for the admirable manner 
in which Miss Wormeley has performed her task. — New York Times. 


Sold by all booksellers. Mailed., post-paid, on receipt 
of price by the Publishers., 

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25 al 3 ac in 

Memoirs of Two Young Married Women. 

Bv Honore de Balzac. 

Translated by Katharine PRESCOTr VVormeley. 121110. 
Half Russia. Price, $1.50. 


“ There are,” says Henry James in one of his essays, “two writers in 
Balzac, — tlie spontaneous one and the reflective one, the former of 
which is much the more delightful, while the latter is the more extraordi- 
nary.” It is the reflective Balzac, the Balzac with a theory, whom we 
get in the “Deux Jeunes Mariees,” now translated by Miss Wormeley 
under the title of “Memoirs of Two Young Married Women.” The 
theory of Balzac is that the marriage of convenience, properly regarded, 
is far preferable to the marriage simply from love, and he undertakes to 
prove this proposition by contrasting the ^areers of two young girls who 
have been fellow-students at a convent. One of them, the ardent and 
passionate Louise de Chaulieu, has an intrigue with a Spanish refugee, 
finally marries him, kills him, as she herself confesses, by her perpetual ' 
jealousy and exaction, mourns his loss bitterly, then marries a golden- 
haired youth, lives with him in a dream of ecstasy for a year or so, and 
this time kills herself through jealousy wrongfully inspired. As for her 
friend, Renee de Maucombe, she dutifully makes a marriage to please her 
parents, calculates coolly beforehand how many children she will have and 
how they shall be trained; insists, however, that the marriage shall be 
merely a civil contract till she and her husband find that their hearts are 
indeed one; and sees all her brightest visions realized, — her Louis an 
ambitious man for her sake and her children truly adorable creatures. 
The story, which is told in the form of letters, fairly scintillates with 
brilliant sayings, and is filled with eloquent discourses concerning the 
nature of love, conjugal and otherwise. Louise and Ren6e are both 
extremely sophisticated young women, even in their teens ; and those 
who expect to find in tlieir letters the demure innocence of the Anglo- 
Saxon type will be somewhat astonished. The translation, under the 
circumstances, was rather a daring attempt, but it has been most felicit- 
ously done. — The Beacon. 


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price by the Publishers, 


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THE WEDDING GARMENT, 


91 dLnit of tbc life to Come. 
BY LOUIS PENDLETON. 


16tno, ClotJif price, $1.00. White and gold, $1.25. 


“The Wedding Garment” tells the story of the continued existence of a young 
man after his death or departure from the natural world. Awakening in the 
other world, — in an intermediate region between Heaven and Hell, w'here the 
good and the evil live together temporarily commingled, — he is astonished and 
delighted to find himself the same man in all respects as to every characteristic of 
his mind and ultimate of the body. So closely does everything about him 
resemble the world he has left behind, that he believes he is still in the latter 
until convinced of the error. The young man has good impulses, but is no saint, 
and he listens to the persuasions of certain persons who were his friends in the 
world, but who are now numbered among the evil, even to the extent of following 
them downward to the very confines of Hell. Resisting at last and saving him- 
self, later on, and after many remarkable experiences, he gradually makes his way 
through the intermediate region to the gateways of Heaven, — which can be found 
only by those prepared to enter, — where he is left with the prospect before him 
of a blessed eternity in the company of the w oman he loves. 

The book is written in a reverential spirit , it is unique and quite unlike any 
story of the same type heretofore published, full of telling incidents and dramatic 
situations, and not merely a record of the doings of sexless “shades” but of 
living human beings. 

The one grand practical lesson which this book teaches, and which is in 
accord with the divine Word and the New Church unfoldings of it everywhere 
teach, is the need of an interior, true purpose in life. The deepest ruling pur- 
pose which we cherish, what we constantly strive for and determine to pursue as 
the most real and precious thing of life, that rules us everywhere, that is our ego, 
our life, is what will have its way at last. It will at last break through all dis- 
guise ; it will bring all external conduct into harmony with itself. If it be an 
evil and selfish end, all external and fair moraines w'ill melt away, and the man 
will lose his common sense and exhibit his insanities of opinion and will and 
answering deed on the surface. But if that end be good and innocent, and there 
be humility within, the outward disorders and evils which result from one’s 
heredity or surroundings will finally disappear. Rev. yohn Goddards 
discourse, July i, 1894. 

Putting aside the question as to whether the scheme of the soul’s develop- 
ment after death was or was not revealed to Swedenborg, whether or not the 
title of seer can be added to the claims of this learned student of science, all this 
need not interfere with the moral influence of this work, although the weight of 
its instruction must be greatly enforced on the minds of those who believe in a 
later inspiration than the gospels. 

This story begins where others end ; the title of the first chapter, “ I Die,” 
commands attention ; the process of the soul's disenthralment is certainly in har- 
mony with w hat we sometimes read in the dim eyes of friends we follow to the 
very gate of life. “ By what power does a single spark hold to life so long . 
this lingering of the divine spark of life in a body growing cold? ” It is the 
mission of the author to tear from Death its long-established thoughts of horror, 
and upon its entrance into a new life, the soul possesses such a power of adjust- 
ment that no shock is experienced. — Boston Transcript. 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

BOSTON, MASS 


Messrs. Roberts BivtJiers' Publications. 


BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 


THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION. 

(L'ENVERS DE L’HISTOIRE CONTEMPORAINE.) 

By HONORE DE BALZAC. 

t. Madame de la Chanterie. 2. The Initiate. Translated by 
Katharine Prescott Wormeley. i2mo. Half Russia. Price, 
$1.50. 

There is no book of Balzac which is informed by a loftier spirit than 
“ L’Envers de I’Histoire Contemporaine,” which has just been added by Miss 
Wormeley to her admirable series of translations under the title, “ The Brother- 
hood of Consolation.” The title which is given to the translation is, to our 
thinking, a happier one than that which the work bears in the original, since, after 
all, the political and historical portions of the book are only the background of the 
other and more absorbing theme, — the development of the brotherhood over 
which Madame de la Chanterie presided. It is true that there is about it all 
something theatrical, something which shows the French taste for making godli- 
ness itself histrionically effective, that quality of mind which would lead a Parisian 
to criticise the coming of the judgment angels if their entrance were not happily 
arranged and properly executed ; but in spite of this there is an elevation such as 
it is rare to meet with in literature, and especially in the literature of Balzac’s age 
and land. The story is admirably told, and the figure of the Baron Bourlac is 
really noble in its martyrdom of self-denial and heroic patience. The picture of 
the Jewish doctor is a most characteristic piece of work, and shows Balzac’s 
intimate touch in every line. Balzac was always attracted by the mystical side 
of the physical nature : and it might almost be said that everything that savored 
of mystery, even though it ran obviously into quackery, had a strong attraction 
for him. He pictures Halpersohn with a few strokes, but his picture of him has 
a striking vitality and reality. The volume is a valuable and attractive addition to 
the series to which it belongs; and the series comes as near to fulfilling the ideal 
of what translations should be as is often granted to earthly things. — Boston 
Courier. 

The book, which is one of rare charm, is one of the most refined, while at the 
same time tragic, of all his works. — Public Opinion. 

His present work is a fiction beautiful in its conception, just one of those 
practical ideals which Balzac nourished and believed in. There never was greater 
homage than he pays to the book of books, “The Imitation of Jesus Christ.” 
Miss Wormeley has here accomplished her work just as cleverly as in her other 
volumes of Balzac. — N. Y. Times 


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Publishers., 

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I 

Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


A VIOLIN OBLIGATO 

\ 

ano (©tljfr g>tories;. 

By MARGARET CROSBY. 

/ 

i6mo. Cloth, price, ^i.oo ; paper, 50 cents. 


A woteworthy dramatic purpose, acute insight into the recesses of individual 
thaiactei, ready command of the motives that govern the relations of allied or 
contradictory natures, a persistent recognition of the essential pathos of life to 
tiiosfc who look beneath its surface, and a versatility of style that easily ranges 
from grave to gay, — these, with an underlying sense of humor that now and then 
Diossoms out into ample radiance, are the traits and qualifications displayed by 
Margaret Crosby in “ A Violin Obligato and Other Stories.” The strength and 
scope of the tales brought together in this volume are indeed remaikable; they 
touch on many phases of human existence, and they appeal to something more 
than a mere desire for mental distraction. Most of the productions included in 
this book have a clear ethical purport ; one cannot read them without getting new 
light upon personal duty and realizing the force of the decree that renders every 
man and every woman responsible for the influence he or she brings to bear on 
others. The first story, ” A Violin Obligato,” deals with the fate of a poor 
musician in whom the artistic impulse overbalanced artistic capability. “ On the 
South Shore ” and “An Islander” have their scenes laid in Nantucket, a region 
where Miss Crosby is apparently very much at home/ The woman whose face is 
her fortune is the central figure in “ A Complete Misunderstanding,” and the 
way in which she wrecks the happiness of two men is related with no attempt at 
melodramatic exaggeration, but with a straightforward vigor that is always effec- 
tive. “The Copeland Collection” has a delightful savor of romance; “Last 
Chance Gulch ” unfolds exciting episodes in the life of a Western mining camp; 
a liaison between a high-born youth and a beautiful gypsy is the theme of “ A 
Mad Englishman”; it is a humble fisherman in a New England village who 
turns out to be “ A Child of Light ; ” and in the “ Passages from the Journal of 
a Social Wreck” there is a comedy of the first order. It is seldom that one 
encounters a collection of short stories from the pen of a single writer where the 
interest is so diversified and yet so well sustained as in this volume by Miss 
Crosby. The talent displayed in every one of these essays in fiction is incontest- 
able. They will take rank at once with the representative work of the foremost 
American authors in this important field of contemporary literature. — The 
Beacon. 


Sold everywhere^ mailed, postpaid, oti receipt of the price by the 
publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. Boston. 


Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications,. 


A QUESTION OF LOVE. 

a ^tor^ of g>tott5crlanli. 


Translated by Annie R. Ramsey, from the French of 

T. COMBE. 

i6mo. Cloth, price, ^i.oo; paper, 50 cents. 


The scene is laid in Switzerland, and the narrative has to do with a delight- 
tully original family, consisting of two old men (one of them almost a centenarian) ; 
a spinster housekeeper of quaint, undemonstrative manners ; an elderly servant, 
always ready to speak her mind on the slightest provocation; and last, but by no 
means least, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whose loneliness amid these surroundings, 
cut off from all companionship with persons of her own age, is forcibly depicted. 
Pretty little Zoe, with her shy ways and her tender heart, is a most attractive 
character, and the reader will not wonder that Samuel, the honest son of the 
neighboring farmer, falls head over heels in love with her. But Samuel’s hopes are 
doomed to disappointment. All the characters are well drawn, and among them 
old Brutus Romanel is not the least delightful. His one ambition is that he may 
live to be a hundred, and he comments on the obituary list in the newspaper with 
a glee that would be disgusting if it were not so artless. Miss Ramsey’s transla- 
tion deserves the highest praise for its freedom from Gallic idioms. Here, evi- 
dently, is one translator who believes that a translation into English ought to be 
written in the English language, and not In that droll Anglo-French patois which 
so often does duty for English at the hands of the ignorant and incompetent. — 
The Beacon. 

It is a clean, sweet-smelling story, a great relief after the quantities of realistic 
stuff produced by the modern French school. The characterization is excellent, 
and the style and treatment deserve special commendation. It is a pretty and 
wholesome love story that recommends itself specially to the attention of the 
maidens. 


Sold by all booksellers, mailed on receipt of price by the publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 


THE MINOR TACTICS OF CHESS. 


A Treatise on the Deployment of the Forces in Obe~ 
(Hence to Strategic Principle. 


BY FRANKLIN K. YOUNG AND EDWIN C. HOWELL. 


16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. $1.00. 


The student of chess will find in this book an altogether original 
treatment of the opening or “development” of the game. Avoiding 
the cumbersome and frequently misleading analysis of which chess man- 
uals have hitherto been composed, the authors have elaborated the known 
principles of development, have discovered and enunciated others of 
manifestly great value, and have..huilt upon this theoretical foundation a 
practical method, or series of methods, of deploying the chess pieces so 
that they shall individually and collectively exercise their normal functions 
in the most effective and consistent manner. A number of standard 
positions, of varying excellence, but all sound and strong, are given as 
models ; and the player is advised to strive toward the attainment of the 
best of these positions which the play of his adversary will permit. The 
construction of “primary bases,” as the standard positions are called, is 
discussed and explained in detail ; and it is believed that even a beginner 
at chess will be enabled by study of this succinctly written book to open 
a game intelligently and with good prospects of success, without having to 
burden his memory at the outset with the manifold variations that are 
worked out in the ordinary treatises. The military idea, which is ap- 
parent in the title, enters to a considerable extent into the new theory, 
but is not made unreasonably prominent. The greater part of the volume 
is what may be termed “ interesting reading ; ” the style is clear and for- 
cible, and the system which it teaches is put together in a piogressive, 
logical way that is quite convincing The technique of the game is 
described, like everything else from preface to finis, in a novel, striking 
fashion ; and the book is adapted equally to the use of beginners and the 
study of experts. It is hoped, indeed, that it may appeal to a class of 
readers who have thus far been frightened away from chess books by their 
intricate appearance, but who may be curions to learn in familiar language 
the elements of chess strategy as it exists in spirii, apart from the letter 
of analysis. 


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BOSTON, MASS.. 


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A BOOK O’ NINE TALES. 

Witl) 3lnterluDcfi. 

By ARLO bates, 

Author of'^A Lad's Love," Albrecht" Berries 
of the Brier f etc. 

i6mo. Cloth, price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. 


Certainly had he done nothing else the present volume should go far toward 
making him a permanent reputation. 

“ His stories are bright and clever, but they have higher qualities than wit and 
cleverness. They have the enchantments of the magician, the pathos and passion 
of the poet. The plan of the volume is ingenious. There are the ‘ Nine Tales,’ 
and they are separated by eight ‘ Interludes.’ These ‘ Interludes ’ are, practi- 
cally, bright little social comedies,” says Mrs. Moulton in the Boston Herald. 

Mr. Bates writes smoothly and pleasantly. His stories and sketches make 
very entertaining reading. 

“ A Book o’ Nine Tales,” by Arlo Bates, who«e writing has been familiar In 
magazines and newspapers for several years, is a readable volume of short stories 
suited to the light leisure of summer days in the country. There are really seven- 
teen stories, although to make the title appropriate Mr. Bates makes every second 
one an interlude. They are simple, gracefully written, unambitious tales, not 
calculated to move the emotions more than will be comfortable in holiday hours. 
They are short and interesting, with all kinds of motives, dealing with love in 
every-day, pretty, tasteful fashion. A weird tale is ‘‘The Tirbero«e,” which 
startles one a little and leaves a great deal to the imagination. The book will be 
a popular seaside and country volume. — San Francisco Chronicle. 

“ A Book o’ Nine Tales,” by Arlo Bates, who has become very popular as a 
writer of love stories, will attract much attention this season from the great army 
of readers who wish for “vacation books.” These nine stories are capitally told, 
and are arranged in a novel manner with interludes between. These interludes 
take the shape of short scenes, arranged as if in a play, the dialogue sustained by 
two persons, a lady and gentleman, which give an opportunity to portray and 
satirize in a verv effective manner many queer society customs, superstitions, and 
characters familiar to every one who ming’es with the world. They make a most 
amusing array of characters, that seem to live, so true they are to human nature. 
“ Mere Marchette ” is a gem in this unusually good collection of literary jewels. 
— Hartford Times. 


Sold by all booksellers, mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price by the 
publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 














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